


The Seventh Heiress

by ChancellorGriffin



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Mob, Alternate Universe - Noir, Alternate Universe - Prohibition Era, Crimes & Criminals, Detective Noir, F/M, Murder, New York City, Organized Crime, POV First Person, Private Investigators, Prohibition, Speakeasies, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2018-04-08 22:52:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 21
Words: 76,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4323858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChancellorGriffin/pseuds/ChancellorGriffin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1922, NEW YORK CITY. Welcome to the offices of Marcus Kane, Private Eye, where the kind of cases the cops can't be bothered with always seem to wash up.  When a wealthy knockout named Abigail Griffin walks through his door one day, pleading for help to find her missing daughter, Kane thinks it's an open-and-shut case of a spoiled rich kid going on the lam after a drunken night on the town.  Then NYPD Lieutenant Bellamy Blake - Kane's inside man on the force - discovers that six other daughters of wealthy families from all over the country have vanished this year and suspects the cases may be connected.  When Superintendent Jaha benches Bellamy for overreaching, he brings the evidence to Kane.  With the help of Bellamy, his eavesdropping, lock-picking sister (and Kane's assistant) Octavia, her ex-mobster boyfriend Lincoln, a Brooklyn mechanic (and occasional getaway driver) named Raven, and the pair of wisecracking bootleggers who run the neighborhood speakeasy, Kane must take the law into his own hands to rescue the seven missing heiresses, as he finds himself falling for the mysterious femme fatale Abigail - who may not be all that she seems . . .</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [museumofflight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/museumofflight/gifts).



Clocks only tick forward.

We can’t see into the future.  We can only see backwards, into the past.  So we don’t always know – in fact, we hardly ever do – when we’re inside the middle of a story. We don’t know the beginning has begun until we reach the ending. That’s life. That’s how it works. So it wasn’t given to me to know, when Abigail Griffin first knocked on my door, what was about to happen to me, or how everything was about to change.

I thought she was a convenient new client at the end of a dry month with so few dollars in the till that I’d had to start sending Octavia home at three and answering the night phones myself. I thought the lady was a knockout, sure; legs for days and big dark eyes you could melt right into. Her face was pretty, but her wallet was even prettier. I thought she was gonna be something nice to look at while I cashed her checks to take on an open-and-shut teenage runaway case. That was all.

I had no idea she was the beginning of a story.

Then again . . . maybe she wasn’t.

Maybe Mrs. Griffin and her big dark eyes weren’t the beginning of a story, but the heart of it. Maybe she wasn’t “Once upon a time.” Maybe she was the third or fourth chapter, the part where things finally start to get interesting, the part where the hero first realizes he may have walked into a trap.

Maybe this story doesn’t begin with a gorgeous millionaire socialite knocking on my door at ten o'clock on a Tuesday night. Maybe it doesn’t begin with a blue-eyed blonde running away from home, or even with those six other missing girls.

Maybe to tell it right, to tell it true, I have to go all the way back.

Rewind the clock.

Start at the end of the story, and flip the pages backwards.

Flip past the Wallace Boys and the Grounder Clan, past Superintendent Jaha, past the bootlegger kids and the girl mechanic, past the night Mrs. Griffin showed up at my doorstep, past the seven missing rich girls, all the way back to page one. And where do you land?

Eight years in the past, watching a river of blood snake through Aurora’s kitchen.

That’s where the story begins. Everything that happened afterwards started there.

Everything that happened afterwards begins with Octavia and Bellamy Blake.

* * *

The thing of it was, what happened to Aurora was a little bit my fault.

I knew those men were trouble. I saw them coming in and out of her apartment, across the hall from mine, at all hours of the day and night. Sometimes they were guys I recognized – low-level street scum, pickpockets and grifters – and I could casually bump into them on the stairwell with my badge in a prominent position and a “don’t fuck with the NYPD” look on my face, and they’d hightail it out of there, never to be seen from again.

But I couldn’t collar them.

I couldn’t actually _do_ anything. I couldn’t stop it.

Everything in all our lives would have turned out completely different if I had.  One phone call.  That's all it would have taken.  And I'd be a different man.

I knew about Mrs. Blake. On paper she was a seamstress; that’s what she claimed on her taxes - if you asked them, the men were just picking up mended shirts - but you didn’t have to be a detective to figure out what was really going on inside. There was no Mr. Blake – never had been as far as anyone ever knew – and nobody in that building had any illusions about what kind of mending took half an hour and made those kinds of noises.

Yeah. I was a cop. It was illegal. I should have busted them all for soliciting. But if I shut down Aurora Blake’s little side business, I knew for damn certain there’d be no one putting food on the table for those two kids. They didn’t have anybody else. Whatever legit work Aurora had wasn’t enough; they were barely scraping by with whatever the johns were paying her.

But it wasn’t just the money.

There was the cupboard, too.

When I first moved into that ratty little apartment in that ratty little building, Bellamy was nine – old enough for school. So he at least had somewhere to go during the day. Octavia was too little. It was almost by accident that Bellamy told me, one night when I found the two kids huddled together in the hallway hiding from another of their mom’s gin-soaked rages, that when Aurora’s clients came over she locked Octavia in one of the kitchen cupboards to get her out of the way. It was a one-room apartment, just like mine – nowhere for a kid to go. And the men didn’t want to look at a kid while they were doing whatever they were doing with Aurora. Octavia wasn’t scared of the kitchen cupboard, she told me bravely, looking up at me through tangles of matted dark hair that no one had brushed in too goddamned long. Nobody lived in there except her and the mouse, and the mouse was her friend.

Bellamy looked at me.

I looked at Bellamy.

I moved my spare key from above the doorframe down to below the mat – where they could reach it – and I sent the kid from the cigarette stand on the corner down to the 24-hour deli for sandwiches.  I pulled my mom’s old quilt from the back of the closet where it had sat collecting dust since I moved in, and then I told Octavia that I was going to teach her how to be a spy.

“Watch your mother,” I told them both. “Watch the way she moves, the things she says, the things she does. Watch to see if you can tell if a man is coming over before the knock comes at the door. Before she puts Octavia in the cupboard. Watch her. Then _get out,_ you hear me?  Get out and come straight here. If I’m home, if I’m not home, doesn’t matter. I’ll leave extra food around in case. I’ll leave out the blanket if you need to sleep on the sofa.” I looked at Bellamy seriously. “But don’t,” I said to him, “ever, _ever_ again, stay in that apartment or out in this hallway when your mother has men over.  You hear me?”

“They’re bad men, aren’t they?” Bellamy asked, and he didn’t even sound like a kid, his soft nine-year-old voice weary with age and sadness.

“Yeah,” I said. “Some of them. Real bad.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to Octavia,” he promised me.

“Nothing better happen to you, either,” I said. “You kids keep each other safe. And remember. Watch your mother. Learn the signs.”

“Be a spy!” said Octavia happily, not quite sure what was going on but excited to learn a new game.

“Be a spy,” I agreed, and I ruffled her hair.  She looked up at me and smiled.

* * *

If Aurora noticed, over the following months and years, that the kids vanished out of sight every time a strange car pulled up below their apartment window and a man got out of it – if she ever knew, or wondered, where they went – she never mentioned it to me. I suspected, with a mix of resignation and rage, that if they were out from underfoot by the time the next client showed up, she didn’t much care where they were.

So we went on like that for awhile. Octavia turned out to be a killer spy, as it happened; she had a quick eye and a photographic memory and ears like a bat. By the time she was ten she knew the secrets of everyone in our building. She knew the men coming and going from her mom’s apartment – it had long since stopped being the family’s home, since Bellamy and Octavia’s belongings had slowly migrated across the hall into the half of my tiny square footage that was now walled off with bookshelves and curtains to make two separate rooms. I couldn’t give the Blake kids the mom they deserved, or save them from the one they’d gotten stuck with, but I could teach them how to keep themselves as safe as they could. I let them ride along with me when I was on patrol (though they knew better than to get out of the car, and they ducked their heads down out of view if another cop car came anywhere near us) and translated for them when calls came over the radio so they knew what the dispatcher meant. If it was a slow night, I would let them play with the handcuffs. I taught them how to pick a lock and spot counterfeit money, what pawnshops fenced stolen goods and which were on the level, how to carry a switchblade where no one would see it and tell when a man was lying. And, as a precaution – given her mother’s clientele – I taught a few extra skills to Octavia. Things that involved sharp elbows and tough little fists in all the soft, painful parts of a man’s flesh. (And I do mean _all_ of them.) The Blake kids grew up tall and fierce and hard as nails, and by the time Octavia was twelve and Bellamy was sixteen I thought I’d done about as much as I could do to see that somebody had left those two prepared for the world.

I was right.  And I was wrong.

The night it happened, I’d been out late on a case (a shooting outside a speakeasy on the East Side, just another day in the life) and had stopped off for a drink at Indra’s Tavern before heading home. Indra's was the highest-quality bootlegging operation this side of the Mafia, but one hell of a lot less dangerous – given that it was the preferred off-duty watering hole of New York’s finest. You couldn’t throw a maraschino cherry in that place without hitting a table full of cops, tactfully ignoring Indra’s wanton violation of Prohibition statutes in exchange for one of her perfect Old Fashioneds. She was a flinty, striking battle-axe of a woman, with a couple perfectly-placed scars on her face that made it clear she wouldn’t hesitate to knife anyone who came in looking for trouble, and even though she hated everyone in New York City I flatter myself she hated me slightly less.  I waved at her her amicably, getting a frozen scowl of greeting in return, knocked back two Old Fashioneds, and stopped for a chat with a couple of the boys. I was in no hurry to get home. I thought the Blake kids were already tucked up on my sofa for the night.

I didn’t know Aurora had run out for cigarettes and, like the thoughtless fool she was, left tonight’s gentleman caller alone in the apartment.

I didn’t know Octavia had caught a glimpse of her mom out my window as she crossed the street, and figured the coast was clear for her to run back and get the schoolbooks she’d accidentally left on Aurora’s kitchen table.

I didn't know that this particular gentleman caller had some rather specialized tastes, and Aurora Blake was far outside the age range he usually preferred when he could get it.

I didn’t know anything, until I strolled around the corner and stopped short to see a whole ticker tape parade’s worth of squad cars, lights and sirens blaring, parked outside my building. _Bellamy,_ I thought, my heart in my throat. _Octavia._ I flashed my badge, shoved my way through the barricades and the on-duty officers, and ran up the stairs to find Superintendent Jaha in the hallway, watching with cold eyes as Sinclair cuffed Aurora Blake and led her out of her apartment.

“What did she do?” I asked, half-crazed with panic. Jaha said nothing, just opened the door a little wider so I could see the bloated white corpse of a naked man inside.

I learned the whole story later, and piecemeal – some from the police reports and the rest from Bellamy.  It had been, well, let's just say an _unsatisfying_ evening for this particular caller. By which I mean to say that he hadn’t yet received what he'd paid for by the time he pushed Aurora off him, called a halt and sent her out for a pack of smokes, a few minutes before Octavia arrived to collect her books and walked into danger.

It was all over very quickly, according to Bellamy, who had heard Octavia cry out and dropped the bottle of milk in his hand, shattering glass all over my floor in his haste to get to her.  He arrived just in time to hear the man say a few things to his sister so unspeakably awful that he refused to repeat them (not that I’d have asked) and to see the man make his move. But the bastard, who deserved what he got and then some, had no idea that the kid he was leering at with his greedy, smirking eyes had a cop friend across the hall who had taught her to be ready for anything. She didn’t have her switchblade on her – she never needed it in my apartment – but the carving knife on the counter left over from dinner worked just as well. The man reached out a hand to grab Octavia, and got a knife through the ribs instead. He went down like a log, said Bellamy, just sank right to the ground. She’d got him in one strike.

The kid was a pro.

I wasn’t sure whether to feel proud and relieved that I’d given her a way to keep herself safe, or horrified that I’d taught a twelve-year-old girl how to kill a grown man, but either way I wasn’t sorry.

And then Bellamy told me the most astonishing part of the whole horrific story - how Aurora walked back through the door, cigarettes in hand, stopped short to see a dead john in her kitchen and her daughter covered in his blood, and proceeded to do the first and last motherly thing he ever saw her do in her life.

She stepped into the dark pool now spreading across the warped wooden floors and took the knife out of her daughter’s shaking hand, wiped off Octavia’s prints, pressed her own onto it, and dropped it next to the man’s body. “Take off your clothes,” she said to Octavia, and sent Bellamy to the bathroom for a wet towel. Then she washed every last drop of blood off the girl’s body, wrapped her red-stained clothes in the towel and sent Bellamy – the only one wearing clean shoes that wouldn't leave gory footprints down the hall – to drop the whole bundle into the incinerator, while she called the police on herself.

Bellamy wrapped his sister in a clean towel and raced her – schoolbooks in hand - back across the hall to my apartment where they locked the door, put on their pajamas and got into bed. That was where I found them, after I watched Aurora meekly follow Jaha out to the street and into one of the waiting cars – huddled on the sofa, wrapped in my mom’s old quilt, shaking and crying.

I didn’t know what to do after that, except pull the flask of whiskey out from behind my bookshelf, give them each one good long swig of it, and pull my blankets and pillow off the bed to sleep that night on the floor beside them.

* * *

The boys didn’t call him “Felonious Jaha” for nothing. Vice was his regular beat, and the notion that one of his officers had a known prostitute living across the hall and never reported it made the veins in his forehead pop. “You goddamn _encouraged_ her, Kane!” he barked at me. “You babysat her damn kids while a line of criminals marched right past your front door and you did nothing.”

“The kids would have starved to death if their mom went to jail, sir,” I told him.

“That’s what orphanages are for,” he snapped. “Someone would have taken them in. And anyway, that wasn’t your concern. Your concern was arresting criminals. A job which you appear to have voluntarily bypassed hundreds of opportunities, over the past eight years, to do.”

“Sir, if you would just –“

“Turn in your badge, Kane,” he said in an icy voice.

So I turned in my badge.

Then I cashed out my pension, banking the cost of the expenses for Bellamy to enroll in the Police Academy, and with the remainder I bought one good suit and put down six months’ rent on a seedy little office on 34th with two rooms – an inner office for me, with MARCUS KANE, PRIVATE EYE on the door, and an outer office with a desk for Octavia.

And then we went to work.


	2. Chapter 2

P.I. work wasn’t glamorous, but it was steady and paid well. I moved us out of that awful building in the Bronx full of bloodstained memories into a clean, well-kept brownstone in Chelsea. I had the second floor; years later, when Bellamy and Octavia finally lit out on their own, they moved into the first. These days Bellamy brought in a crummy but steady salary on the lowest rung of the NYPD ladder, and Octavia worked for me.

She had just turned thirteen when I signed the lease on my new place of business, and I took her down to visit when I went to pick up the keys. “This one is my office,” I said, pointing to the door, “and this one is yours.”

“I have an office?” she said, wide-eyed, and I nodded.

“You’ll have to answer phones,” I said. “And the door sometimes. And you’ll have to learn shorthand to take notes in meetings. You’ll have to learn some secretary things. They’ll be boring, but useful.” She nodded. “And some other things, too,” I said. “You’ll have to learn how to listen in at that door without being seen. You'll have to learn to be invisible in plain sight.  You’ll have to get good at spotting whether people are straight or crooked. When a potential client walks through that door, you’re going to see them first. You’re going to get the first impression. They’ll put on their good manners for me, but they might not for you. You see why that’s valuable?”

“Because they won’t be pretending,” she said. “They’ll come in and they’ll think I’m just a girl. So they’ll just be their regular old selves.”

“Exactly,” I said. “So you’re going to need to put those eagle eyes to work. You think you can do all that?” She nodded. “I’ll pay you,” I said. “Two dollars a day. You’ll come straight here after school and you can do your homework in between clients. Sound good?”

She eyed me with some strange emotion between suspicion and elation. “How come you don’t just hire a grown-up?” she asked me, eyes narrowed, and I laughed and rumpled her hair.

“Because, kid,” I said, “you and your brother have the makings of two very fine detectives. But you’re a girl and they won’t let you into the Academy – their loss – so you’re going to have to learn the ropes your own way.”

“Am I your partner?” she said, looking up at me with dark hopeful eyes, and I looked at that twelve-year-old kid who’d spent her childhood locked in a cupboard, fleeing from her mother’s drunk rages, and had already had to kill once to protect herself, and I felt something closer to love than I’d ever felt in my life.

“Yeah, kid,” I said. “You’re my partner.”

 * * *

To be honest, I was always a little too “live and let live” to be a very good cop. I wanted to keep dangerous people off the streets, sure. I wanted to keep the city safe. But Superintendent Jaha ran his force with all the wild-eyed fervor of a religious zealot (I think if he could have, he’d have started giving jaywalkers the electric chair “to set an example”), and we didn’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of the smaller stuff. Like Aurora Blake, for one. And, for another, the Grounder Clan.

Now, I wasn’t stupid. I knew the Grounders were behind half the illegal liquor trade in the city, and I sure as hell knew their hands weren’t clean. They were a gang of rough-and-tumble smugglers and their payroll included everyone from eavesdropping call girls to dirty cops. The Grounders were no saints.

On the other hand, as I pointed out to Jaha on a number of occasions – before Aurora Blake got herself arrested and Jaha shoved me out the door – the Grounders were like a wild animal: only violent when attacked. If you left them alone, I explained to him, _they_ left _you_ alone. Indra was a Grounder, for Christ’s sake, and like all of them, her bark was worse than her bite. She looked like a creature that would eat its young, but in all my life I never saw her start a fight. (Finished them, yes. Never started one though.) Jaha thought every last Grounder should be locked up and questioned – preferably with fists – until every last drop of smuggled hooch was turned over to the authorities.

Now, maybe it’s a touch hypocritical of me, as a regular consumer of that very same smuggled hooch, to be defending a gang of mobsters, but the fact is that I found the Grounders useful. They had eyes and ears all over the city. They could get a guy inside places no cops could go. Indra’s bar served plenty of NYPD, sure, but we were always rubbing elbows with Grounder customers too, and after awhile a grudging truce developed. After all, it wasn’t like they were murderers; a Grounder would only shoot you if you shot at him first. They kept well away from anything nasty – never harmed civilians, wouldn’t be caught dead running prostitution rings or blackmailing anyone who didn’t deserve it. They were strictly an import/export operation, and all in all they kept their noses pretty clean. You know, for mobsters. We paid good money for their booze, we politely looked the other way when the petty, low-level stuff came over our desks, and in exchange they fed us information when we needed it.

No, I had no bad blood with the Grounders. But even I looked a little askance – just a little – when Octavia started dating one.

I know, I know. I wasn’t her father, for Christ’s sake. It was none of my business who she was seeing. And Lincoln wasn’t so bad for a Grounder. (“ _Ex_ ,” she snapped at me, over and over again. “ _Ex_ -Grounder.”) He’d been a high-up lieutenant managing their side trade in opium, but he’d gone straight years before. He still hung around Indra’s from time to time, and while his defection had clearly not endeared him to her, she still treated him with a familial respect. Or at least, she didn’t throw him out the window, which was more or less the same thing. It was Indra who talked me down off the ledge when Bellamy first informed me that Lincoln had been taking Octavia out dancing.

Indra, as I’ve mentioned, had a grudging and chilly tolerance for me, and for most of the rest of humanity – even her fellow Grounders – with one noticeable exception.

She was _crazy_ about Octavia.

I suspected that the knife-wielding lawbreaker in Indra recognized Octavia – who had murdered a man in cold blood at the age of twelve – as some bizarre type of kindred spirit. Which was something I had mixed feelings about, frankly. I wasn’t sure Indra was the role model I would have chosen for Octavia. (Then again, who was I to judge? She’d only killed that man because I taught her to.) But I felt as sure as I could possibly feel about anything in my life that if Lincoln was trouble, Indra would have smashed a bottle of whiskey and carved up his chest with the broken glass before letting him lay a hand on Octavia. So if she told me it would be fine, I had to believe her.

Still. It was Octavia. Octavia and a _Grounder._

But she was twenty now, and Bellamy twenty-four. They were adults. They made their own decisions. Bellamy had used the cash I set aside for him (reluctantly, since he hated owing favors, even to me) to enroll in the Police Academy, like he’d always planned, and once he joined the force and began collecting regular paychecks he and Octavia got their own apartment – albeit an apartment one floor down from mine, which never seemed to have any food in it, judging by how often I found the two of them rummaging through my kitchen.  They weren't kids anymore.  They sure as hell weren't _my_ kids.  Never had been.  So I gritted my teeth and decided to learn to like Lincoln.

Fortunately, it wasn't hard.  He was quiet, and serious, and didn't laugh much, and from the way he closed up tight like an oyster whenever the Grounders' brief foray into the opium trade came up, I gathered that he got out of the game because he'd seen some bad things.  Or maybe been through them himself.  Opium can take a man to some dark, unpleasant places, and Lincoln had the eyes of someone who'd been down to one or two dark places in his life.  But he was unfailingly gentle and kind with Octavia, and he took her ambition seriously.  That, more than anything else, made me come around on Lincoln in the end.  Another man - hell, most other men - would have raised an eyebrow at Octavia's line of work.  She could pick a lock with a hairpin before she turned fourteen, she could read backwards and upside down, and for her birthday I'd bought her a stethoscope and an old Diebold safe, which she was teaching herself to crack.  Lincoln found all of this enthralling (perhaps it amused him somewhat to find that the same skills he spent years honing for use in the drug trade were so enthusiastically applied on the other side of the law) and he taught her one or two tricks of his own.  I'd never given her firearm lessons, for example - I wasn't crazy about guns myself, though in my line of work they were a necessary evil and I could comport myself perfectly well with my old derringer when the need arose - but under Lincoln's tutelage she expanded her arsenal of weaponry from fists and knives to include an impressive competence with Lincoln's Smith & Wesson. 

(It went without saying, of course, that we told none of this to Bellamy.)

Octavia was smart and observant, quick and clever, and learned over the years to read a client in a heartbeat.  If someone walked through the door that Octavia didn't trust, she would slip me a discreet note as she escorted the client in and I'd find a tactful way to decline their case.  If Octavia believed the client's need was real, and desperate, she'd signal me to clear my schedule so we could start right away; and, because she also kept the books, she sometimes find ways to be a little more flexible on payment.  She was the gatekeeper.  I relied implicitly on her judgment to size everyone up before I decided whether or not to take the case.

But that fateful night - the muggy summer Tuesday when Abigail Griffin walked through that doorway and into my life, knocking the whole world off its axis - Octavia wasn't there.

I've spent a lot of time since then wondering how all our lives might have turned out very differently if she was.


	3. Chapter 3

 

In hindsight, it feels right - and more than a little ironic - that the first part of Abigail Griffin I ever saw was her shadow.

It was hot that evening, I remember. Too hot. One of those sticky July nights where a haze lingers over the streets long after dark. One of those nights where the subway stations feel like the bowels of hell, where your shirt clings to your back like a damp second skin until you’re so irritated you want to claw off your flesh. One of those nights where you lie underneath your creaking ceiling fan and listen to the ice cubes in your sweating water glass clink together and wish you lived anywhere but New York City. ( _Alaska,_ you think to yourself in desperation. _Alaska sounds nice. Maybe Greenland.)_

One of those nights where nothing good happens. Where the heat makes us do things we’d never ordinarily do.

It was just on ten o’clock, and Octavia had gone home hours ago. I was sitting at my desk in my shirtsleeves - jacket and tie long since discarded - giving the last few cubes of melting ice in the tin bucket on the windowsill a hero’s death by letting them spend their final moments with my good Scotch. The phone hadn’t rung in four hours, and I was strongly considering calling it a night; there was still another hour or so’s worth of work left to do in closing up the Cartwig divorce case, but I could finish it in the morning. I wanted to go home, stick my face in the icebox, then lie in a cold bath with another Scotch until I felt human again, then fall into bed under that creaking ceiling fan and pray for sleep. Just another New York summer night.

So that’s where I was, flipping through the Cartwig file and swigging the last of my drink, sweating in my shirtsleeves and muttering irritably to myself, when the door to my office opened and a long shadow, cast from the bright light of Octavia’s office, fell across the room.

“I’m so sorry,” said a throaty voice, as warm and rich and expensive as good red wine. “The door was unlocked and your secretary seems to have gone.”

I looked up sharply, hand reaching instinctively for the desk drawer where I kept the derringer.

And there she was.

She stood in my doorway, sending a broad slice of light from the outer office right down the center of my dim little room, with her shadow right there in the center of it. The shadow was long and lean and sharp as a knife. The woman wasn’t.

It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the sudden shift of light, which gave her chestnut hair the look of a golden halo and cast her creamy skin and big dark eyes into half-darkness. There was something haunted in those eyes, but something warm and sweet in the lines around them. This was a woman who ought to have been happy, but wasn’t. This was a woman whose narrow shoulders carried the weight of something dark and heavy. _A sad angel in a black dress,_ I thought suddenly, and was surprised later to realize just how true that first impression had been. She was small and slim, but with the kind of curves underneath that seductively clinging silk that my feverish, Scotch-and-heat-and-lust-fueled imagination could picture Menelaus going to war over.

I didn’t just want to tear that crisp black dress off her and bury my mouth in her white throat. I wanted to handcuff myself to her and bury my mouth in that white throat for the rest of my life.

 _This_ was a face to launch a thousand ships.

This was a woman who could get me to do absolutely anything.

That’s how long it took. Just those first few seconds. By the time she opened her mouth to speak again, I was already lost.

“Did I startle you?” she asked, an apologetic half-smile curling at her lips, and I snapped abruptly back to reality. “Startled” wasn’t quite the word. _Get a hold of yourself, Kane,_ I thought irritably.

It was the heat.

It must be the heat. That’s all.

“Your secretary seems to have gone,” she said again, giving me a curious look, which reminded me that I still hadn’t said anything out loud yet, “and the door from the hallway was open. I can come back if this is a bad time?”

I forced myself to behave normally.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, rising to come around from the desk, shake her hand and pull out the chair across from mine. She was wearing gloves, thank God. If I’d touched her skin I felt sure there’d have been an electric shock to black out the whole building. “Yes. You startled me a bit. But it’s quite all right. Please, have a seat,” I said, babbling a little as I ushered her into the chair. “I’m Marcus Kane, well, you know that already, name’s on the door, but yes. That’s me.”

“I’m sorry to come so late,” she said, seating herself elegantly, setting her handbag down on my desk and crossing a pair of world-class legs I tried not to stare at. "I'm very glad I happened to find you in."  And that was when I noticed the second most visible, most overwhelming thing about Abigail Griffin. I’d been knocked sideways by her beauty when she walked in the door and didn’t catch the second thing until she was seated across from me and all the little clues began to come together.

Silk stockings. French perfume. Real pearls. The unmistakable pristine cut of a Chanel suit.

This woman was very, very, _very_ rich.

And very _married_ , I suddenly realized as she pulled off her little white gloves and folded them into her (also Chanel) handbag and the iceberg on her ring finger flashed into view. Well. That was one solution to my problem, then. The lady was not available. Good. Fine. _Clients are off-limits anyway,_ I told myself firmly. _She’s come to you for help. And the rent’s due next week. This is a godsend. Behave._

“My name is Abigail Griffin,” she said to me, “and my daughter is missing.”

What I should have done next was pull the pencil and notepad out of my desk drawer. What I should have done next was begin carefully and thoroughly taking her through our standard list of missing-persons questions: daughter’s name, age, physical appearance; where was she last seen; did she have a history of running away; how long had she been gone; etc. What I should have said was, “My rate is ten dollars a day plus expenses, and if you come back in the morning Octavia can settle you up with all the paperwork.”

Instead, what I heard myself saying was, "Would you like a drink?"

* * *

“You’ll want to know, of course,” said Abigail, sipping her Scotch with the practiced ease of a woman used to stiff liquor, which did nothing to help suppress the disastrous schoolboy crush I was fighting to keep under control, “if she has a history of running away. Or if we fought that night. The answer to both is yes.”

Her frankness was refreshing. She was obviously in desperate straits – I could almost smell the panic on her, could see how her precise small movements signaled a woman coiled very tightly and afraid of falling apart altogether – but she still met my eyes straight-on and answered every question calmly and clearly. Clarke was twenty, an accomplished artist who had just returned from two years in Paris to spend a few weeks in New York with her mother. Abigail had a place of her own on Park Avenue, but when Clarke was in town from Europe they liked to stay at the Plaza together; Abigail confessed to me, with a childlike air I found hopelessly endearing, that she liked sometimes to play tourist in her own city. “You see things differently,” she said. “More clearly, maybe. You’re looking at everything as though it’s the first time. It keeps the city fresh.”

I agreed with her heartily. I would have agreed with her heartily if she’d told me that dragons lived in the subway. They’d been at the Plaza together and had just come back from a late dinner. Abigail had read for a little while and then gone to bed. In the adjoining room, she heard Clarke moving around, and heard the door open and close. Clarke was young, and kept later hours, and the two nights prior she’d gone out for a night stroll before returning to bed (“Nowhere in particular, just around,” she’d said when her mother asked where she’d strolled to), so Abigail didn’t worry. She simply rolled her eyes at the folly of youth, switched off the lamp, and fell sound asleep. She didn’t discover until the next morning, when the waiter brought both women’s breakfasts to Abby’s room – assuming, because Clarke’s was empty, that they were together – that Clarke hadn’t come home.

The night concierge had seen her go out the Fifth Avenue exit a little before midnight. She wasn’t wearing a coat over her evening dress, and she didn’t look worried or suspicious or in a hurry or anything that struck him as particularly odd. As a matter of fact, the only reason Clarke Griffin caught his eye, in the throngs of bright young things that were always parading in and out of the hotel lobby at midnight, which he explained was practically lunch time for these types, was that he recognized her intricately beaded rose-colored dress as a Lanvin that she must have bought straight off the runway. Meaning he had noticed, from Clarke’s glittering dress, the same thing I had noticed from her mother’s expensive perfume and the clean lines of her suit:

_Money._

A concierge in a high-class hotel can practically _smell_ money. He smelled it on Clarke Griffin in her Lanvin evening dress, trotting alone out the front door to Fifth Avenue, and he made a mental note to find out what room the rich blonde girl was staying in and quietly make himself invaluable in the hopes of a sizeable tip when she checked out.

So when Abigail Griffin found him later that day to ask if he had seen Clarke the night before, all he was able to tell her was that by five a.m. when his shift ended, the girl in the rose-colored dress had not come back through the Fifth Avenue door. He didn’t know anything more than that.

“And you said she’s run off before?”

She dismissed it with a wave of her hand. “Nothing serious. She wouldn’t even have characterized it as ‘running off.’ She’d go out with some friends, and tell me she’d be back Saturday morning, and then they’d get invited by someone at the first party to come to another party, and then that someone would have a house in Long Island they were just dying to bring everyone to, and then it’s Wednesday and I’m near hysterics and she calls me at one in the morning from some wild cocktail bash to ask if she’s left her bathing suit in the hotel room, completely forgetting that I didn’t know where she was.”

“How many times has she done that?”

“Oh, two or three times,” she said. “I think . . . three. Twice here, in the city – last Christmas and then two summers before – and then once a few years ago in London.”

“And you fought the night she left?”

Abigail stiffened at that, but nodded.

“Yes,” she said. “Rather badly.”

“The concierge told you she didn’t seem angry, though when he saw her. He said she looked rather cheery.”

“We talked it out, more or less,” she said. “She didn’t run screaming out the door. We had a rather nasty quarrel, I left to take a walk and cool down, then came back, we went down to dinner, and by the time we came back up to the room we were both mostly civil again. I told her we’d speak again in the morning and then I went to bed. I only bring it up,” she added, “because we argued about a boy, and that seemed the kind of thing you ought to know.”

“Ah,” I said, the truth dawning. “Yes. You’re quite right. I would have got around to asking you about boys eventually.”

“His name is Wells Jaha,” she said, and my whole body went tense and cold. She stared at me. “What?” she asked curiously. “Do you know him?”

“Your daughter was seeing the son of the NYPD Chief Superintendent?” I asked incredulously.

“Well, not if I could help it,” she said frankly. “The Jaha men are trouble. Thelonious and my husband used to know each other, a long time ago. I didn’t trust him then and I don’t trust him now. Mind you, I don’t have anything bad to say about Wells – he’s always doted on Clarke, never been anything but proper – but you can see how a mother wouldn’t necessarily want her daughter marrying into a family where that crazy-eyed loon would be her father-in-law.”

“Marry?” I asked. “Were they an item?”

“I don’t know,” she sighed. “Clarke says not. But they spent all their free time together whenever she was in the city, and it always made me wonder.”

I sighed, watching those glittering dollar signs shimmer and fade into nothingness. “Ma’am,” I said, “if Superintendent Jaha’s son is involved, well, I’m flattered you came to me first for my assistance, but this really is the kind of case that ought to go straight to the police. I don’t think there’s anything I can do for you that they couldn’t do better. NYPD’s not perfect, but they take care of their own.”

“I didn’t come to you first,” she said coolly, and I watched her fingers tighten around her tumbler of whiskey until the knuckles whitened. She was furious, I realized. And not at me. “I’ve been to the police. Three times. I’ve even spoken to Jaha. They won’t do anything.”

“What do you mean, they won’t do anything?” I asked in astonishment. “Did you file a report?”

“Of _course_ I filed a report,” she snapped. “I did everything they told me to do. I called the police first thing that morning, when I woke up and found she had gone. They told me there was nothing they could do until she’d been missing twenty-four hours. So I waited. I called everyone she knew in the city, and I paced back and forth in my hotel room, and I watched the clock tick, and then as soon as twenty-four hours had passed I called back. They sent a pair of cops to the hotel to sniff around a little, ask some patronizing questions and then leave. Nobody seemed worried. Everyone treated me like I was just a hysterical woman."

I nodded sympathetically, but in truth I could see their point. A pretty young rich girl in New York City, just back from Europe and catching up with all her friends? A girl with a history of jetting off to wild island parties and vanishing for days at a time?

This was perfect. This was a perfect case. The woman had plenty of money. I’d string it out, just a little, not enough to really be on the wrong side of dishonest but enough to cover the electric bill and bring Octavia back to full-time for the next month or two. And then it would take me approximately five minutes to track down Clarke Griffin at the home of whichever millionaire’s son was having a yacht party this weekend, bring her back to the Plaza, and win the undying gratitude of her gorgeous mother.

It was perfect.

What could possibly go wrong?

“I’m sorry the police weren’t any help,” I said. “What did Jaha say?”

“He told me the same thing I can tell that you’re thinking,” she said crisply. “That Clarke is off at another wild party and she’ll come home on her own soon. The only helpful thing I learned from him is that she wasn’t with Wells that night. He didn’t know where she was. But then Jaha and I – well. We had words.”

“You had words?” I prompted.

“He said Clarke had always been wild,” said Abigail, “that this was her father in her, that kids just take off sometimes, and that I was making a lot of fuss over nothing. He said the NYPD was on it and would call me if they heard anything, but that I should just go back to the hotel and wait to hear from him.”

“And what did you say?”

“I wouldn’t care to repeat myself in mixed company,” she said primly, and against my will I burst out laughing. She grinned a little too, as if sharing a secret.

“I wish I’d been there,” I said. “I’ve imagined saying many unrepeatable things to Jaha myself.”

“Is that how you ended up here?”

“How I ended up here,” I said repressively, thinking about the Blake children, “is a story for another time.”  She took the cue, and didn't press further. 

I looked at her curiously then, a thought coming to me. “How did _you_ end up here?” I asked suddenly.

“I beg your pardon?” she asked, looking just a shade uncomfortable.

“How did you find me?” I asked. “Did you just look me up in the telephone directory? Was it that helpful concierge again, trying to earn his tip?”

The worry on her face cleared, and she smiled again. “Oh, I see,” she said. “No. It was that cop.”

“Which cop?”

She looked confused. “I thought he’d have told you,” she said. “He seemed to know who you were.”

“Back up. Start at the police station and take me through it.”

“There was a boy,” she said. “Well. A man, I suppose. He was a cop. But a young one. Tall, thin. Really, he looked like a little boy in his father’s suit. He must have overheard me in Jaha’s office – probably everyone did, I suppose; I wasn’t really trying to keep my voice down by the end – and as I was walking out the door he pulled me aside and said ‘Marcus Kane, second floor, corner of 34th and 6th. He’ll help you.’ Well, I had no idea what he meant, or who he was talking about, but I went outside and I hailed a cab and I –“

“Dark hair?” I said. “Freckles?” She nodded.

“That’s right,” she said. “Do you know him?”

“I’ll say I do,” I muttered, picking up the phone.

 _What could go wrong?_ I thought to myself.  _This.  This could go wrong._   Whatever this was, it wasn't an open-and-shut rich girl runaway case.  There was something big here, something I was missing.  Or at any rate, Bellamy Blake seemed to think so.

I tried their apartment first, and then mine. No answer. But the third time’s a charm, and I struck gold at Indra’s.

“What do you want?”

“Are they there?”

“Yeah.”

“Put ‘em on.”

“Which one?” she asked.

“I don’t care. Either of them.”

She sighed tersely and I heard muffled sounds in the background, followed by Octavia’s voice.

“Marcus?”

“Grab your coat and get down here,” I said. “And bring your brother. Fast as you can.”

“Bellamy? Why?” she asked suspiciously. “What did he do?”

“He just canceled whatever plans you and Lincoln had for the evening,” I said. “He found us a client.”


	4. Chapter 4

“These are nice,” said Abigail, lifting the heavy crystal tumbler of whiskey up to the light and appraising it with the sharp eye of a woman used to fine things, and I felt that particular mix of awkwardness and pride that belongs to working-class guys showing off the one nice thing they own in the presence of a high-class dame.

“Christmas present,” I said. “From my assistant.”

“Ah, the mysterious Octavia,” said Abigail, sipping her drink, and I looked at her in surprise. She smiled. “I’m not spying,” she said. “I just saw the nameplate on her desk.”

“Not mysterious,” I said, setting down my glass and settling back into my seat. “Just not here.”

“Of course,” she said. “Because I interrupted you after hours.”

“No, she keeps the same crazy hours I do,” I said. “She’s on her way over now, in fact.”

“At eleven at night?” said Abigail incredulously. “You have a remarkably devoted secretary.”

“She’s more than just a secretary,” I replied, with a twinge of what might have been defensiveness, and it wasn’t until Abigail raised an impeccably arched eyebrow and gave me a look full of some potent blend of revulsion, disappointment and amusement that I realized what she thought I’d meant.

“Oh, no,” I exclaimed in horror. “No, no, no. She’s not – I didn’t mean – I’ve known the kid since she was _five,_ I didn’t mean to imply that –“

“So ‘more than a secretary’ actually means –“

“Think less seduction, more breaking and entering,” I said, and was irrationally pleased to see that she was _relieved_ I wasn’t sleeping with Octavia. I tried hard not to think about what that might mean, but then I went ahead and did anyway. “She’s more like an apprentice, is what I was trying to say,” I said. “Detective-in-training. Lock-picking, eavesdropping. Occasional grifter work when I need a girl in a dress to go undercover, but she’s not as good at that. She can tell in a snap when someone else is lying, but she hates doing it herself.”

“To tell when someone is lying,” said Abigail, sipping her whiskey. “Wouldn’t our lives be easier if we all had that skill.”

“Not mine,” I said. “I’d be out of work.”

Abigail laughed at this.

“You’re funny,” she said. “I didn’t expect you’d be funny.”

“Or you just didn’t think anything would ever be able to make you laugh again,” I said, gambling on a bold answer, and she looked up at me sharply with something like gratitude in her eyes.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, that’s it exactly. I suppose it’s no surprise that you’re quick at reading people, but you’re kinder than I thought you’d be, too.”

“What _did_ you think I’d be like?”

She set her glass down on the desk and looked me over thoughtfully. “Colder, I think,” she finally said. “Harder. Less of a real person, maybe. I thought you’d sit me down and ask me some questions and take my check and then shove me out the door. I thought you’d be all business.”

_Like I should have been._

“Do you mind that I’m not what you expected?” I asked.

“I _like_ that you’re not,” she said, and there was something warm and inviting in her voice that made me lean in closer towards her, almost without being aware of it. “I like _you_. I didn’t think I would.”

“That’s flattering,” I said dryly, and was rewarded with another low, throaty laugh.

"I don't trust many people," she said.

"I know the feeling."

"Yes," she said.  "I believe you do."  Her eyes were big and dark and I began to fall into them.  “I don’t know what it is about you, Mr. Kane,” she said softly, “but it’s been a long time since a man has made me feel so –“ She stopped herself just in time, blushed a little, looked away, and took a long drink of whiskey to hide her sudden discomfort. I found myself unable to repress an image of myself sweeping all the papers off my desk and throwing her down on top of it to take her right here and now, and then I needed a good long drink of whiskey too.

We sat there uncertainly for awhile, staring into our glasses, before Abigail, mercifully, changed the subject.

“You said she’s on her way?” she asked. “The girl, I mean.”

“Yes,” I said, gratefully recollecting myself back to reality. “Sorry. Yes. She’s bringing her brother, too. The cop you met. Lieutenant Blake. He works with us sometimes.”

“Oh,” she said in surprise. “So . . . you’ve already decided you’re going to take the case.”

“I _took_ the case,” I said. “We’ve started. I’m calling in the team. We’re in business, Mrs. Griffin.”

“I’m so glad,” she said. “I was so afraid . . . I wasn’t sure. Every time you look at me I keep thinking, this is it, he’s going to tell me in a sad voice there’s nothing he can do and break the bad news to me very gently."

“I don’t do anything gently,” I said in a hoarse voice, the words out before I could stop myself. She inhaled sharply at this, and I could see from the way her dark eyes widened that she knew what I meant, that she was thinking what I was thinking, and an electric current lifted us both out of our chairs at the same time. I stood, slowly, and she rose from the other chair and came around the desk until she stood so close to me that I thought I could hear her heartbeat. Or maybe it was mine, hammering away in my chest.

“You are not at all what I thought you’d be,” she said in a low voice, and I watched with a savage kick of excitement that went all up and down my body as she softly flickered her tongue out to moisten her rose-red lips. I bent my head down toward hers, and I felt her hand alight on my waist, and oh, this was such a bad idea, it was the best bad idea I’d ever had, and we moved in towards each other slowly, slowly, softening, melting, and just as my mouth was so close to hers that I could taste the sweetness of her panting breaths, the elevator bell rang and I heard the iron gates screech open down the hall. Footsteps, voices, then the outer office door.

By the time the Blakes entered, loaded up with all the essentials for a long night’s work – Bellamy had a stack of police files and a fresh bottle of whiskey, Octavia a bag of sandwiches from the late-night deli – Abigail and I were seated decorously on opposite sides of the desk, eyes carefully avoiding each other’s gaze, the lost kiss hovering in the air between us.

“You’re drinking with the client?” said Octavia in an incredulous voice only I could hear as she leaned over my shoulder and began pulling sandwiches out of the bag.

“Cool it, Octavia.”

“You _never_ drink with the clients.”

“I said _cool it_.”

“Lieutenant Blake,” said Abigail, rising to shake his hand as he entered. “Thank you so much for your help. I can’t tell you what it means to me that at least one of you took me seriously.”

“I took it very seriously,” he said, setting down the bottle on the sideboard and piling the files on my desk. “We’re going to do everything we can to get your daughter back, Mrs. Griffin.” Octavia came around the desk just then and extended her hand to Abigail.

“Octavia Blake,” she said. “I’m his sister. And Kane’s assistant.”

“You’re Octavia,” said Abigail, a smile in her voice, looking the younger woman up and down appraisingly. I regarded the Blake siblings for a long moment and I tried to see them the way Abigail might; yes, they were young – so young, too damn young to have seen the things they’d seen – but there was grit and grace and toughness etched in every line of their faces and every bone of their bodies. The way they held themselves, straight and tall. The way they weren’t afraid to meet her eyes. The way they moved comfortably around my office as though they’d grown up here – which, of course, they had. I tried to see them as a stranger would, if I were Abigail and trying to decide whether she could trust us. And then I saw her nod, almost imperceptibly, and smile at Octavia, and Octavia nodded back, and I could tell both women had passed the other’s unspoken test.

“I’m very glad to meet you,” said Abigail to Octavia. “I’m grateful to you all. I was furious when I left the police station last night. And a little brokenhearted, I think. I was so sure the police weren’t going to do anything. That I was on my own.”

“You’re not,” I said firmly. “You have me. Us.” The Blakes turned two pairs of curious eyes at me, and I realized my tone must have been a little more naked than I intended. But Abigail smiled at me, a weary, grateful smile, the smile of a woman who’s been walking alone through the desert for a week and just found water, and that smile made my heart turn over in my chest and I knew all the way down to the marrow of my bones that there was nothing I wouldn’t do for another smile like that. I’d have walked into fire, if she told me to, if it meant I’d get that smile again. It lit up the whole room like the sun was rising.

But outside it was night, it stayed night, and the dark hungry city on the other side of my grimy windows didn’t stop and wait for us. It kept moving, lights and sound and voices and bodies and cars and trains and barking dogs, all of it smothered by that damn, _damn_ heat, and the old Marcus Kane would have moved along with it, would have felt it pulsing inside his veins, but the new Marcus Kane sat stone-still, like a chump, watching himself from a far-off distance as he fell headlong in reckless, irrevocable love with Mrs. Abigail Griffin of Park Avenue.

But that wasn’t the only foolish thing the new Marcus Kane did that night.

My first mistake might have been letting myself come so dangerously close to kissing that intoxicating woman.

But my second mistake was, as I took her glass over to the windowsill to plunk in a few fresh ice cubes before Bellamy poured her another drink, that I didn’t give more than a passing thought to the dark figure, collar turned up high and hat pulled down low, who abruptly stepped out of the orange light of the streetlamp below my window, melted into the shadows, and vanished.


	5. Chapter 5

We didn’t keep Mrs. Griffin too long after the Blakes arrived. We couldn't really delve into the case in front of a client, so once Bellamy had patiently taken her through the same general timeline of Clarke’s disappearance that she had given me, Octavia led her into the other room to settle up. One week’s expenses up front, more if we needed it. I hoped we wouldn’t.

It was around one in the morning by the time I walked her out to the elevator. We stood side by side, listening to the dull heavy creak of the old machinery as it lumbered its way up from the ground floor toward us.

“What happens next?” she finally said, as the elevator wheezed into view.

“We go to work.”

“Right now?” she said. “It's so late."

“We’ve got sandwiches,” I said, pulling open the ironwork door so she could step inside. “We’ll be fine.”

She smiled at that.

“What do I do?” she asked. “You have to give me something to do, or I’ll go crazy."

"Mrs. Griffin, the best thing you can do is -"

"Don't," she said.  "Don’t say, ‘Wait.’ Don’t say ‘Do nothing.’ Give me _something_.”  Her dark eyes were pleading.  "I can do _something_ ," she insisted.  "I can help, if you'll let me."

I considered protesting, but instead I simply nodded.  “That concierge,” I said. “Go make friends with him.  Pick his brain.  See if he noticed anything else unusual in the lobby that night.  Or either of the nights before, when Clarke went out alone.  And I’m sure housekeeping has been there since, but it wouldn’t hurt to search her room.”

“They haven’t,” she said. “The police told them not to. It’s all still just as it was.”

“Perfect,” I said. “That’s a stroke of good luck for us. I’ll have Octavia call you in the morning and she’ll come by to take notes and help you look. Maybe she’ll spot something the cops missed."

She nodded, grateful and relieved, and I closed the elevator door. Before I could push the button to send her down, she reached a small gloved hand out to me through the bars.  I took it and held it for a long moment. We looked at each other through the open metal grating of the old elevator, and something in that moment gave me a strange, cold feeling of danger. Like she was a prisoner, or a wild animal, trapped behind iron bars, pleading for rescue.

But iron bars, of course, work two ways.   They keep things in.  They also keep things _out._   It's important to know which side is the dangerous one.

I shook off the dark feeling and pressed her hand in mine.

“Thank you for the drink,” she said. “Thank you for – for everything.”

“Just doing my job,” I said. She shook her head fervently.

“No,” she said. “It’s more than that. You’re kind. You didn’t have to be kind. You didn’t have to believe me. I thought nobody would believe me.”

We were very close together.  She was breathing heavily, and I allowed myself one brief, luxurious moment to flicker my eyes downward to the place where her perfect breasts rose and fell inside the rustling black silk of her bodice before I forced myself to be Marcus Kane again.

“Get some sleep, Mrs. Griffin,” I said. “We’ll call you tomorrow. I promise you, we’re going to do everything we can to find your daughter.”

She looked at me as though she might have wanted to say more – her mouth parted slightly and I heard a soft intake of breath – but then she simply withdrew her hand from mine, smiled at me, and pressed the elevator button.

A few moments later, she was gone.

* * *

 Back in the office, Bellamy and Octavia had already cracked into both the whiskey and the sandwiches. They’d moved from my office into Octavia’s, which had a conference table in the corner so we could spread out. I sat down beside Bellamy, who passed me a sandwich.

“You human again?” he asked me, through a mouthful of ham on rye.

“Shut up.”

“I’ve never see you like that. You’ve got it bad.”

“I’m not doing this with you right now, Bellamy,” I snapped, flipping my notebook open rather pointedly. Bellamy threw up his hands in a gesture of surrender, and let it go. “All right,” I said. “First impressions.”

“Money,” said Octavia immediately, and both Bellamy and I nodded. “The mother _reeks_ of it. Enough money to be a pretty powerful motive for blackmail or kidnapping.”

“It's been twelve days with no ransom,” I pointed out. “Though that doesn’t mean there won’t be one.”

“If they haven’t killed her yet,” said Bellamy.

"That would be stupid," said Octavia doubtfully.  "Under what _possible_ kind of circumstances could a girl with that kind of money be worth more dead than alive?”

“All kinds,” I said. “She could have witnessed a crime. She could know a secret that some powerful person doesn’t want to get out. She could have slept with the wrong man. Or the wrong woman. She could have seen something she was never supposed to see.”

"Or," said Bellamy in the tone of someone making an announcement, "she could be the sole heir to a staggering fortune which she’ll never see a penny of if she dies before November.”

I stared at him.  So did Octavia.  If he'd wanted our attention, he'd gotten it.

“What are you talking about?”

“She’s twenty,” he said. “And on November 16th, on her twenty-first birthday, she comes into a controlling share of Griffin Railways.”

“Griffin Railways?” I murmured, eyes wide with shock. He nodded.

“She’s Carson Griffin’s granddaughter,” he said. “He died about ten years ago and left everything in trust for Clarke. All the land and estates, all his assets, and 51% of the company’s stocks. If she makes it to November 17th alive, she’ll be one of the wealthiest women in the country.”

“What happens if she dies before she turns 21?” asked Octavia curiously. “Who gets it then?  Have you seen what's in the will?”

“Yes," said Bellamy a little hesitantly.  "I've seen what's in the will."

"So, what did it say?"

“That’s why I wanted you to meet her,” he said. “I’ve been following this whole investigation, Kane, and something doesn’t add up.”

“Bellamy,” I said warningly, feeling a chill prickle the back of my neck. “ _What did the will say_?”

He looked at me, a challenge in his eyes. “If Clarke Griffin dies before she turns 21,” he said, “the estate reverts back to her parents.”

“Good God,” said Octavia, staring at him. “ _That’s_ why Jaha wouldn’t help her. _That’s_ why she couldn’t get anyone to give her any details on the investigation.  Of course there'd be no ransom.  Not if the kidnapper was the one person in the world who didn't need the money."

“Octavia, no,” I said warningly. “Don’t go where you’re going.”

“No, it’s perfect,” she said, voice rising in excitement. “It makes everything make sense. They didn’t turn her away because they think she’s hysterical or overreacting. They turned her away because _she’s a suspect.”_

“Half a billion dollars, Kane,” said Bellamy.  "She's not just _a_ suspect, she's _the_ suspect."

“Not in this room she isn't," I said sharply.  "She didn’t kill Clarke.”

“Do you _know_ that?” asked Octavia, and her straightforward calm had never been so irritating. I was struck with the sudden urge to throw something through a plate-glass window, or break the whiskey bottle. I wanted to shatter something. I didn’t know why.

 _Abigail Griffin did not kill her daughter,_ I said to myself firmly. _Abigail Griffin did not kill her daughter._

But Octavia was right. I didn’t know.

I didn’t know anything.

“These are _your rules_ , Kane,” said Octavia impatiently. “We didn’t make them up. We learned them from you. ‘Start at the center and work outward,’ that’s what you always say. Start with who has the most to gain. You don’t think there are parents out there who would bump off their kid for half a billion dollars?”

“Abigail Griffin is not a suspect,” I said firmly. “She is our client.”

"I'm not telling you I think she did it," said Bellamy.  "I'm telling you _Jaha_ thinks she did.  If we want the police to help find Clarke Griffin, we've got to start by clearing Mrs. Griffin's name and giving Jaha a better suspect."

“Fine, then, let's find one,” said Octavia, giving up. “If Kane's so sure the mother had nothing to do with it, let’s move on to her husband.”

“Husband?”

“Yeah,” said Octavia, taking a long swig of her whiskey and passing the bottle to her brother. “Same motive applies to him. But we don’t know anything about where he was that night. What did she tell you?”

“What did she tell me about what?”

Octavia was staring at me blankly like I’d grown a second head.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll go really slowly. When you were interviewing Mrs. Griffin –“ She paused, a little patronizingly, and waited for me to nod.

“Yes?”

“And you asked her take you through the events of that night –“

“Yes?”

“And you asked her when she’d last seen Clarke, and then to describe her own movements  –“

“Yes?”

“Then what did she say when you asked her where her husband was?”

I suddenly became very interested in my sandwich, attempting to avoid Octavia’s penetrating stare, but was unsuccessful.

“You didn’t ask,” said Bellamy, incredulously, and it wasn’t a question. “Half a billion dollars split between them, and we don’t even know where the other one is.”

“You knew there _was_ a husband, I’m assuming?” she asked dubiously. “You saw the size of the rock on her hand?” _Yes, of course I did,_ I thought bitterly, _and then I tried to push it out of my mind altogether and forget the man who gave it to her ever existed._ But of course I could not say that to Octavia. “She’s still wearing a wedding ring the size of the moon,” said Octavia snappishly, “but she’s staying alone with her daughter in a hotel in New York City – even though she _lives in New York City_ – and you _never_ stopped to ask yourself where her husband was? Jesus, Kane, what’s gotten into you?”

“Maybe she's a widow,” suggested Bellamy.

“Maybe he _wants_ her to be a widow,” Octavia fired back.

“Knock it off, Octavia,” I said, and it came out far more harshly than I meant. She flushed red and looked away, startled and angry and a little hurt, and I felt myself collapse back into my chair, all the air rushing out of my lungs.

What had happened? Who was this new Marcus Kane, who almost kissed a client in his own office, who was now ignoring vital evidence and snapping at Octavia?

What had that woman done to me?

“Can you handle this?” asked Bellamy quietly, and I was annoyed at myself that whatever was going on inside my fevered brain was written so clearly across my face.

“I’m fine,” I said, trying to sound normal. “I’m fine. It’s just the heat.”

“Well, snap out of it,” said Octavia, softening slightly but still not quite looking at me. “You still have to do your job.”

“It’s the heat,” I said again, a little petulantly, and Octavia almost laughed.

“Sure, Kane,” she said agreeably, sliding the bottle across the table towards me. “Sure it is.” I poured myself another two fingers of whiskey, carefully avoiding her eye. Bellamy reached into the middle for another sandwich at the same time, jostling the table slightly and causing me to spill a few drops of whiskey on the massive stack of files he’d left on the table.

I froze.

_The files._

I had been so preoccupied with thoughts of Abigail – with trying not to think about Abigail – with wondering if Abigail really was what she said she was – that I had only dimly registered the enormous stack of NYPD case documents Bellamy had brought in with him. And so it had not at any point occurred to me that I was looking at far, far too much paperwork for one missing girl.

Bellamy followed my eyes from the whiskey bottle to the stack beside me, and smiled.

“Are you finally gonna ask me what’s in these files?” he said with a faint grin, and I felt the waves of excitement rising off him from all the way across the room. Bellamy was on the scent. Bellamy had found something.

“What’s in the files, Bellamy?”

“The other missing princesses.”

I stared blankly.

“ _This_ is our case,” he said. “It’s bigger than we thought. So much bigger. Clarke Griffin isn’t the first rich teenage girl to go missing this year, Kane. She’s the seventh.”

* * *

They call New York "The City That Never Sleeps," and they're right. Perfectly respectable people are out and about at all hours of the day or night, going to work or coming home.  Midnight is practically rush hour.  There are always cabs on the street, always lights on, always diners open for people whose jobs mean their dinner break is at one a.m., always high bedroom windows open to let in the faint little breaths of breeze, always voices coming out of those open windows, sometimes accompanied by barking dogs or the distant sound of a phonograph.  The tradeoff for living in a city where the lights never switch off, so you can never see the stars, is that the heartbeat of the city never slows or fades. 

As we left the office, I could hear church bells throb faintly through the city's night noises and I realized it was two-thirty in the morning; eight blocks north of us, the Printer's Mass was just starting at Holy Cross.  Every morning at this hour, while all the men in suits who think they run this city are tucked up in bed with their mistresses or wives, an ex-military chaplain throws open the doors of his church and offers Holy Communion to the city's night workers - the ones who _really_ run it.  You want a picture of the real New York, there it is.  Not the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty, not the Broadway lights or the roller coaster on Coney Island, but a low brick church with its lamps burning in the darkness while a crowd of cab drivers and call girls, artists and cops, and the typesetters working all night long in the _New York Times_ building up the street, sit shoulder-to-shoulder and sing hymns in the middle of the night.

We walked down Eighth Avenue toward Chelsea, away from the church bells and into the quiet, the night's damp heat pressing against our skin with a palpable weight.  Octavia and Bellamy kept pace with each other, and I found myself lagging just a few steps behind them, all the way back to the apartment, lost in thought.

I knew as well as Octavia and Bellamy did why I had asked Abigail Griffin absolutely nothing about where her husband was.  She was wearing black, and she had wanted me to kiss her.  Maybe that meant she was a widow.  Maybe it meant she was a married woman looking for an affair who happened to know that black looked good on her.  Maybe there was more going on than I knew. 

Maybe I wanted to know. 

Maybe I didn't.

But one thing was for sure - I couldn't leave Clarke Griffin's father out of this story any longer.  I had to get some answers.

If you really want to know what it was, the thing that made me slow my pace and fall out of step with the Blakes and hang back so I could be alone with my thoughts, because I felt like a heel, because I was afraid they'd be able to sense that I'd suddenly turned into a terrible person - here it was.

Did I want Mr. Griffin alive (making Abigail no longer the only one with motive), or dead, so I could sleep with his wife?

She was either romantically available and the only suspect in her daughter's murder, or she was another man's wife.  Those were the choices, and the devil of it was that I wasn't sure which one I wanted her to be.

These were the dark, twisted thoughts that circled my mind as we walked down the muggy night streets toward home. 

These were the echoes of my mind I didn't want the Blakes to hear.


	6. Chapter 6

Octavia's boyfriend Lincoln (if he had a first name, I never learned what it was; nobody ever used it) was that rarest of New York's native specimens: a former gangster who'd gotten away clean.

He was a Grounder.  His father had been a Grounder, and his grandfather before that.  He'd lived all his life in the very upper echelons of the Grounder hierarchy.  He'd been near the top of the food chain with their opium trade, like I mentioned.  Heir to the throne, you could say.

And then one day, he walked.

Now, you know this, and I know this, we all know this, it scarcely even bears repeating, but here it is: mobsters don't get to quit their jobs.  Once you're inside, you're inside.  You're an asset.  You know things.  You take that information outside the family, and bang.  That's it.  You're dead. 

The smartest, most sensible thing for the Grounders to do, once Lincoln decided he wanted out of the opium trade, would be to shoot him in the head, and I never entirely figured out why they didn't do it.  Sometimes I suspected they didn't quite know themselves.  But they let him walk.  He went straight and never came near the Grounders' opium dens again.  The Grounders had no love for traitors and defectors, still less a high-level operative full of valuable intel who was now dating the sister of a cop.  And yet, puzzlingly, they continued to let him live.  He was no longer one of them, but he remained a perfectly civil acquaintance, as well as a regular at Indra's, where I never saw him treated with anything less than perfect courtesy.  This may have been the key to the entire thing; I had long believed Indra's role inside the organization went well beyond mere bartender, and I rather suspected that it was her influence that kept Lincoln from winding up dead on the side of the road with a bullet in his back.  This was, of course, a source of tremendous relief to me, since he and Octavia were fairly serious at this point and it made us, in some strange way, nearly family.

Still, Bellamy and I trod carefully with Lincoln.  We were never sure how thin it was, the ice he was on, or how small a movement might cause it to shatter.  So when my office, or the NYPD, were pursuing a case that might end poorly for a Grounder, we kept ourselves well clear of being seen in public with Lincoln, and we never asked him anything that could get him into trouble.  In exchange for these courtesies, and because of Octavia, we received unspoken permission to use him (and his robust network of underground contacts) as sources on any case that _didn't_ involve Grounders.  On the whole, the system worked fairly well.

Lincoln's network of sources hadn't dried up and vanished when he went clean.  In fact, there were a handful of them that never really believed he had (since he was still alive).  Bellamy had to be a bit more judicious, since he was limited to information that would hold up in a court of law; but Octavia and I were bound by no such scruples, and we'd go anywhere in the city to ask any question of any source Lincoln trusted, if it would help us crack a case.  Over the years we'd shut down prostitution rings, drug dealers, and dozens of thefts by asking the right questions of somebody that the police would never think to ask.  Superintendent Jaha would never have solved the case of those three murdered waitresses if Lincoln hadn't sent us to interrogate his pickpocket friend who lived by the river.  Lincoln's friends were sometimes shady, occasionally terrifying, but often astoundingly useful.

The most valuable of them all was a girl named Raven Reyes.

Raven was a mechanic, who knew more about automobiles than anyone I've ever met before or since.  Her repair shop was entirely on the level, but she did occasionally moonlight for the Grounders' import/export jobs as a getaway driver and manufacturer of what she nonchalantly described as "the occasional boom."  I had, fortunately, never been in the position to require either of her more legally dubious services, but as a car expert she was second to none, and sharp as a tack to boot. 

And, most crucially for our current case, she knew the streets of New York City like the back of her hand - every inch of it, from Battery Park to the Bronx.  If we could find any whiff of a clue as to any place Clarke Griffin had gone, then Raven could help us fill in the dots . . . and maybe point us to where she'd ended up.

We were reluctant to involve Indra or the Grounders too deeply in our investigation - God knows New York was full of people that would have been happy to find a way to pin a wild rich girl's murder on the city's widest purveyors of illegal liquor - but we couldn't risk Raven or any of Lincoln's sources being seen anywhere near my office.  I was an ex-cop, and my assistant was a cop's sister.  We were dangerous people to know, if you lived on the other side of the law, and it was as much as Raven Reyes' neck was worth to be seen knocking on my door.

So we compromised.

I would continue to meet with Mrs. Griffin at my office, but we moved our "war room" (as Octavia liked to call it) onto neutral ground.

Neutral, that is, if you didn't mind the alcohol fumes.

Jasper Jordan and Monty Green were friends of Lincoln's too.  They weren't Grounders, though they shared many common interests.  They were illegal moonshine distillers.  They had established a truce with the Grounders where they sold their wares only to to businesses who bought from the Grounders' competition, thus neatly avoiding any risk of undercutting Grounder profits with their cheaper booze.  In exchange, they received assistance with navigating the labyrinthine bureaucracies of the city's Vice squad (which is to say, bribes) and armed protection whenever they needed it.  To me, they both looked like children, but Raven assured me they were very respectable criminals indeed, and Raven would know.

Mrs. Griffin had showed up in my office on a Thursday.  We split up on Friday and Saturday to follow up on our various leads, and I didn't see much of either of the Blakes except in passing until Bellamy convened us late Sunday morning at Monty and Jasper's bar, a third-floor speakeasy over an East Village laundromat which you could only enter by a hidden door in a side alley.  Bellamy had left hours before us, claiming he had to "get things set up," so by the time I arrived at eleven a.m. with Octavia - who had spent the past two days at the Plaza with Abigail Griffin but learned nothing of use - he had transformed a disused back storage room into a makeshift office, with tables and chairs and a typewriter for Octavia.  He had also taken over the far wall and pinned up a giant U.S. road map with the photos of each missing girl over the city where she’d disappeared, with lines of red string connecting them in order.

Jaha had decided that Abigail Griffin was a suspect in her daughter's murder, which meant that it was suddenly very important to me - far more important than it had seemed from the beginning - to find out what had really happened to Clarke Griffin.  So we had a case that pointed in two different directions; Bellamy took one, and I took the other.  It was possible that her death was an isolated event, that she had been killed for her money (as Jaha theorized).  That was my investigation.  That was where I'd be doing my digging.  But Bellamy had rallied the team to Jasper and Monty's to present us with the evidence of a second theory, which might not only clear Mrs. Griffin's name but solve a string of unsolved murders dating back to January: the theory that all these cases were connected. 

Which made either of the Griffin parents supremely unlikely candidates for committing a murder.

I watched Bellamy for a moment in silence as he tied the last string of red around the pin that attached Clarke Griffin to the map of New York, and felt the cold prickle of goosebumps all up and down my arm, along with some strange heady mixture of adrenaline, elation and fear.  If he was right - if all seven of these girls were taken by the same people - then Clarke Griffin was in even greater danger than her mother could have ever imagined.  Was, in fact, almost certainly dead.

But if she _wasn’t?_

Well, if she wasn't, then we suddenly had six times more evidence to help us try and find her.

I had begun that morning with what had seemed like the simplest and most straightforward of questions - was Mr. Griffin still alive, and if so, where was he? - and had been inexplicably stymied at every turn.  There was no record of a death certificate, nor of a divorce.  On paper, she appeared very much still married.  Yet Octavia, who had spent the day following her around their suite at the Plaza as Abigail inventoried all Clarke's left-behind possessions, tried half a dozen times to discreetly bring up the husband and got nowhere.

"It didn't seem calculated," said Octavia, "it felt like we were just having a conversation.  But every time she mentioned him, it was hopelessly vague." 

Everything had been in the past tense, but neutral in tone.  Octavia would comment on a piece of particularly lovely jewelry: "Oh, Clarke's father gave her that."  Tone casual and light, not weighted with grief and sorrow.  He could have given it to her five years ago before he died in a train crash, or he could have given it to her last Thursday.  It was impossible to tell from Abigail's tone.  Finally she gambled on a direct question: "Was Mr. Griffin staying in the hotel as well?" and got no more than a, "Clarke and I like to come here together for some mother-daughter time, we've been doing it for years" as a response.  Which also could have meant anything.

How was it possible that the answer to this question was so difficult to find?

I had asked Octavia to tread carefully, to only use oblique questions.  I did not want her to look Mrs. Griffin in the eye and ask her, "Is your husband dead, or a living murder suspect?"  But it was a thing I badly needed to know.

Finally, at a loss, I had given up and sent for Lincoln, who met us at the speakeasy that morning.  I gave him as complete a description of Jacob Griffin as I could find, which wasn't much - just a few newspaper clippings mentioning his name from a few years ago when his wealthy father-in-law died - and explained our problem.

"You can't figure out if your client is a widow or not?" he said, raising an eyebrow.  I threw up my hands in frustration.

"I know," I said.  "I know how it sounds.  But he seems to have just . . . vanished."

"No death certificate, no divorce, but she never mentioned his name, and she's staying in a hotel with the girl by herself, but she's still wearing the ring?"  He shook his head.  "Confusing.  I'll ask around and see what I can turn up for you."

"Thank you," I said.  "Meet us back here if you find anything; we'll be here all day."

He nodded, shook my hand, kissed Octavia goodbye and took off down the stairs, passing Raven on her way up.

"Morning, boss," she said lightly, reaching up on tiptoe to kiss my cheek. 

"It's barely morning and I'm not your boss," I said, grinning at her.  I liked Raven Reyes, probably a little more than I should.  She was quick and clever and she made me laugh, and more than once I'd found myself wishing that she was twenty-nine instead of nineteen - either so that I wouldn't blush so furiously when she flirted with me, or so I could actually do something about it.

The sudden and violent appearance of Abigail Griffin in my life had pushed thoughts of any other woman out of my mind, but Raven Reyes was still the same bright sparkling ball of light that she'd always been, and I was always pleased to see her.

"What's Bell got for us today?" she asked.

"Seven missing girls," I said.  "Probably dead."  The smile tumbled off her face and she looked at me with dark, worried eyes.

"Do we know that for sure?"

"No."

"So there's a chance we can find them?"

"That's the hope."

"Then I'm in," she said.  "For whatever you need."

"You're a good girl, Raven Reyes," I said.  She laughed at that.

"No, I'm not," she tossed over her shoulder as she headed into the other room.  "I'm a bad girl who works for a good man.  There's a difference."

The few seconds that I watched the swing of her hips inside the coarse dark canvas of her mechanic's uniform from behind as I followed her into Bellamy's makeshift office were the longest I went all that day without thinking about Abigail Griffin.

"Finished!" Bellamy announced just as we entered, and I watched with more than a little pride as he tied off the last pin and turned to me for my approval.  The map was huge and spanned the whole width of the back wall, with seven faces staring out at me from all across the country.  Pinned up neatly next to the photos were Bellamy's carefully-handwritten notes detailing the basic facts of each case and victim.

"Very good work," I said to him approvingly, and he blushed and looked down awkwardly and shuffled his feet.  He had never been very comfortable with praise.  "My only concern is that when you give these files back to Jaha, you'll get a stern talking-to for sticking pins through photos from his evidence files."

The room became very still suddenly.  Monty and Jasper, who had been in the process of moving some crates out of our way, quietly set them down and vanished.  Even Octavia and Raven, who I had thought were right by my side, disappeared from view.  Suddenly it was just me and Bellamy, and the unsettling _something_ in the air between us which had sprung into being when I had mentioned Jaha's name.

"You'd better just tell me," I said finally, leaning back in the doorway and watching him grow more and more uncomfortable.

He looked away from me and muttered something under his breath.

"Igotkickedoffthecase," he mumbled, low and fast, so I could hardly hear him.

"What did you say?"

" _I got kicked off the case_ ," he snapped irritably, and I stared at him.  "I'm on leave of absence," he muttered.  "Probation.  Jaha's going to decide at the end of the month if I get to come back."

"When did this happen?"

"Thursday."

"The night you sent Mrs. Griffin to my office."

"Yes."

"And you came with Octavia.  And we sat there for hours with those files.  And you never said anything."

He stared down at the floor, red-faced and embarrassed, kicking idly at a frayed patch in the threadbare carpet.  I sighed. 

"All right," I said, seating myself on one end of the sofa and motioning him down onto the other.  "Talk."

* * *

Bellamy had first become concerned that Superintendent Jaha was not taking the Griffin case sufficiently seriously on the very first day, when Abigail Griffin had called in to report that Clarke never returned to the Plaza.  He had been at his desk just a few feet away and had heard the sergeant on duty come in to brief Jaha.

"Griffin, you said her name was?" Jaha had asked curiously. 

"Yeah," said Byrne.  "Mom's named Abigail, kid's named Clarke.  You know 'em?"

"Know the name," said Jaha dismissively, but with something in his voice that had made Bellamy sit up and begin paying closer attention.  (Bellamy had not been idle all those years when I'd been teaching Octavia how to spot a lie.)  "Kid's a wild one.  Always off at some party or other.  My son knows her.  This isn't one to waste police resources on.  Mark my words, Byrne, she's off drinking champagne naked in a swimming pool at some rich kid's house and forgot to call her mom."

"What should I tell her?"

"I don't care," said Jaha, "just say we're looking into it."

Byrne nodded, saluted, and left.

Bellamy, annoyed at Jaha's flagrant unconcern for reasons he couldn't quite name to himself - but which later, of course, were apparent to us all - finally rose from his desk and knocked on the Superintendent's door.

He had never knocked on the Superintendent's door before.

He was not entirely sure the Superintendent knew his name.

But still.  He knocked.

Jaha looked up, curiously, and stared for a moment before waving him in.

"What?" he said without preamble.

"The Griffin case, sir," said Bellamy.  "I'd like to help."

"You can help by doing your job," said Jaha, "and letting the cops assigned to the Griffin case do theirs."

"You haven't assigned anyone to the Griffin case, sir," said Bellamy, in a firm but respectful voice.  "I just heard you tell Byrne.  You haven't, and you're not going to.  If you can't spare a more experienced cop, let me do it.  Let me look into this case."

"It's a drunk rich girl trying to scare her mother," said Jaha.  "It's not worth a penny of our time."

"Then don't pay me anything for it," said Bellamy.  "Just let me go down to the Plaza and look around."

Jaha looked him over appraisingly for a long moment, then shook his head.

"I'm not sending you out into the field," he answered finally, and Bellamy's face fell, "but I'll compromise with you.  If the kid's not back in twenty-four hours I'll send two guys to go ask questions at the Plaza, and I'll make sure you get their report.  You can be their desk support.  That's the best I can do for you, kid.  How about that?"

"That's fine, sir," said Bellamy.  "Thank you."

But as he explained to me, there on the sofa in the bootleggers' back room, there had never been a report.  Two of Jaha's right-hand men had gone down to the Plaza and - as Abigail had told me - were dismissive, unhelpful, and singularly unconvinced there was anything to discover.  Bellamy had been as disgusted with them as Abigail had, and decided to look into it himself.

The girl who sat at the desk in the police records room downstairs was about Bellamy's age, and very friendly.  She didn't think too highly of Jaha either, and a certain degree of fellow-feeling led her to be excessively helpful (and discreet, where needed) with the younger officers. 

"I need to get my hands on a file," said Bellamy, "and the Superintendent can't know about it."

Fox nodded with a conspiratorial smile.

"Not a problem," she said.  "What do you need?"

"There's a rich girl missing," he said.  "Jaha thinks she just ran off, but her mother doesn't.  Her mother thinks something happened to her.  She just disappeared from a hotel in the middle of the night and never came home.  I want to find her.  Or at least, I want to try."

Fox nodded.  "I know just the girl you mean," she said.  "I'm glad you're doing something about it.  But you know I don't have the full file, don't you?  Just a copy of the APB.  San Francisco PD didn't send the file."

"What are you talking about?"

"The missing rich girl," she repeated, puzzled.  "The one who disappeared last month in San Francisco.  They sent out a nationwide All-Points Bulletin with her photo and description.  Isn't that what you were looking for?"

"I wasn't before," said Bellamy, an idea slowly dawning in his head, "but I am now."

It took them all afternoon, but Fox located not only the full NYPD case file for Clarke Griffin (which wasn't much) but six memos sent from all over the country over the past year involving similar cases.  Once he had the name and case number of each girl, and the city from which she had vanished, Bellamy begun to assemble a file on each one.  Fox and the other clerical assistants helped in their free time, chasing down press clippings and making phone calls.  Bellamy had longed to see the local police files on each of the girls, but despaired of ever receiving Jaha's permission to request them.

Until Fox explained that they didn't need Jaha's permission.

Every police station in every city had a Fox, she explained.  There were record-keepers and administrative assistants and librarians and evidence room front desk check-out guards.  If Bellamy had approached the case cop to cop, reaching out to a fellow officer on the SFPD, there would be questions of jurisdiction and phone calls between the commissioners and reams of paperwork.  Fox, on the other hand, could simply telephone a fellow records clerk and request a document transfer directly.

Bellamy was astonished at how quickly they arrived.  He covered each one with an NPYD case file folder so no incriminating information was visible, and he buried them on his desk amidst his regular stacks of memos and filing.  If anyone from the NYPD ever discovered that six other cities had sent over case files on missing girls whose disappearances had not taken place anywhere near New York City, Bellamy never heard about it.  He was in the clear.

Jaha didn't even remember to ask the two cops who had gone with Abigail to the Plaza for a report until a week had gone by.  They were in his office on another matter while Bellamy was hard at work typing up toxicology reports.  Then he heard the name "Griffin" and stopped.  He heard Jaha tell the men, in a tone of wearied annoyance, that the mother had apparently been calling two or three times a day, and he'd tasked Byrne with holding her off.  The men dismissed it.  Bellamy heard them tell Jaha there was nothing missing, no sign of a struggle, the girl had left in evening clothes with her handbag, had a history of such antics, and ran with a particularly bohemian set.  "She's drunk in a bathtub somewhere," said one, and Bellamy could hear them laughing in Jaha's office.  "That's a pretty picture," said the other, "she's got a hell of a pair of legs on her, that kid.  You seen the photos?"  And he whistled appreciatively, under his breath.

It was the whistle that did it.

Bellamy stormed into Jaha's office, eyes dark with fury.  "She's a real person," he snapped at all three of them, too cold with rage to notice the startled, then angry looks on the faces of the Police Superintendent and two of his most trusted officers.  "She's a real person and her mother is worried, and if you don't give a damn about that then I honestly don't know why any of you are still wearing those uniforms." 

"Watch yourself, kid," said one of the cops.  "You be careful how you speak to us."

"She's a _person_ ," he said again, "and she's _missing_.  She could be dead.  We have to do something."

"I appreciate your enthusiasm," said Jaha icily, "but it's under control."

"Sir, if you would just -"

"That's _enough_ , Blake," Jaha snapped, and he waved the other two men out the door.  They left, shooting amused little glances over their shoulder at Bellamy as the door closed behind them, and he was left alone with a very angry Superintendent.

"Sir," said Bellamy, "there were six other -"

"I don't want to hear it."

"But Clarke Griffin could be -"

"I have told you over and over," said Jaha, "and I will not tell you again.  You are not on this case.  There _is_ no case.  If you say the name 'Clarke Griffin' in my presence one more time, that will be the end of your career with this police force, do you understand me?"

Bellamy stared down at the carpet, cheeks red and hot, fists clenched white with anger, but he didn't say anything.  He just nodded.

"Three weeks' leave of absence," said Jaha. "Paid - I'm a fair man - but as of 9 p.m. tonight when your shift ends, you are off-duty, do you hear me?"

Bellamy nodded again, not trusting his voice to speak, and stormed out of the room.

He had left at nine, on schedule, his feet automatically directing themselves toward Indra's, towards his sister and his friends and a stiff drink.  Then halfway home he realized, with a gut-clenching panic, what he had forgotten.

_The files._

It had entirely slipped his mind, as he gathered up his things and stormed out the door at the end of his shift, that all seven of the missing girls' files were still on his desk. 

Fox had gone home for the night, and he had nowhere safe to conceal them at the station.  There was no one he could call.  If Jaha sent another cop over to Bellamy's desk to finish up those tox reports in his absence, they would find out exactly what he had been up to - against Jaha's express instructions.  He would be fired.  And, worse than that - so would Fox.  He had no way to reach her, to warn her; it was up to him to get the evidence out of there before someone found out what he had done.  No one but Jaha knew he was technically on leave already, and with any luck Jaha would already have gone home.  There was nothing to be done but sneak the files out of the office and hide them at home until he returned three weeks later, and hope to God that nobody came down to Fox's desk to look for them while he was out.

He came in the long way from the side door to avoid the lobby, weaving through rows of desks, ducking low as he passed through Jaha's line of sight.  Mercifully, the files were still there, buried in an innocuous-looking pile of paperwork, entirely untouched.  He breathed a sigh of relief, stuffed them inside his coat and turned to flee back the way he'd come.  That was when he heard the Superintendent on the telephone.

"Half a billion dollars," said Jaha.  " _Billion_ , I said.  Not million.  But only if the kid doesn't make it to her 21st birthday." 

Bellamy, in the shadows outside Jaha's door, froze in his tracks.

"It's an open-and-shut case against the mom," Jaha went on.  "Her dad skipped her over and put the kid in his will.  Kid dies before November, Mrs. Griffin gets everything.  You want to tell me that's not a motive?"  There was a pause.  "Nothing on paper," said Jaha, in response to an unheard question.  "We can't get the Griffin Railway lawyers up our asses.  We go slow, we keep it off the books, but we don't sleep until that woman's in jail."  Another pause.  "Clear on this end," said Jaha.  "There was a kid sniffing around, one of the baby officers, but he's taken care of.  On leave as of -" He checked his watch.  "Half an hour ago.  So we're fine.  Only trusted officers on this one.  The case needs to be airtight, I can't have some kid bumbling around and screwing it up."  Another pause.  "Absolutely," said Jaha, in a tone of surprise.  "You kidding me?  Absolutely, she did it."

Bellamy didn't need to hear any more.  He chanced the shorter route this time, walking out calmly and normally into the main hall as though he was just now leaving for the day.  That was when Abigail Griffin - with no idea that he was an ally, no idea that he was clutching her daughter's confidential police file under his coat - stormed around the corner so forcefully that she almost knocked him into a wall, two desperate desk sergeants scurrying along in her wake shouting, "Ma'am, you can't go in there!"  It was a remarkable first impression, and endeared her to Bellamy immediately; oh, how he wished she'd gotten there five minutes earlier and overheard Jaha telling someone she was a murder suspect.  The fireworks would have been even more impressive.  Still, as it was, she was no slouch, and Bellamy - melting into the crowd to eavesdrop without being spotted - would happily have paid admission for the chance to see an encore performance.  They went at it hammer and tongs for several minutes, clearly audible, and though the horde of shamelessly eavesdropping cops was largely amused by the scene, Bellamy seemed to be the only one who slowly began to feel that something here was very wrong.

You can tell, listening to two people scream at each other, if they've screamed at each other before.

Thelonious Jaha and Abigail Griffin clearly had. 

He had told Byrne that he barely knew the woman, yet his confident assurance that she was the killer he was looking for indicated otherwise.

Something here was very wrong.

Bellamy couldn't be seen following her out of the building.  He had to flee before Jaha emerged and spotted him in the lobby.  So instead, as she sailed out of the superintendent's office, leaving a Broadway-melodrama-worthy door slam behind her, the only thing Bellamy could do was exactly what he did: seize her by the elbow, whisper my name and address into her ear, and pray to God that she'd come.

He already knew the truth by then.

Nobody was coming for Clarke Griffin. 

Nobody was going to do anything.

Nobody, that is, but Bellamy Blake.  And - by extension - us.


	7. Chapter 7

Lincoln, still chasing down the whereabouts of the elusive Jacob Griffin, telephoned the bar to tell me we should start without him.

"Do you have something?" I asked curiously, and his voice on the other end of the phone had something in it that I didn't quite like.

"I don't know," he said finally.  "I might.  I can't say yet."

"Lincoln, where are you?"

"Public telephone," he said.  "In a diner near the Queensboro Bridge."

"Where can I reach you?"

"You can't," he said.  "Not now.  Too dangerous.  I'll find you when I know more."

I wanted to press farther, but didn't.  If he said it was too dangerous to talk, it was too dangerous to talk.  "All right," I said.  "Call when you can.  We'll be here."

I heard voices in the background.  It sounded like shouting.

"I have to go," he said, and abruptly rang off.

"Was that Lincoln?" asked Octavia, peering her head out of the war room door.  "Is he coming?"

"Not yet," I said.  "He's onto something, but he'll call when he has more to tell us.  Is Bellamy ready to start?"

"He's ready," she said, and held out her hand.  I followed her back into the room, where Raven was sitting on the back of the sofa with her feet on the arm rest, a bottle of beer in her hand.  Octavia took up her position at the makeshift desk in the corner, typewriter at the ready, while Monty mixed a tray of cocktails at a long counter behind us.  I sat down next to Raven as we all looked expectantly at Bellamy, who stood in front of the makeshift evidence wall.

"The most important thing," I began, as we all settled in, "is that we've got to come at this as though the girls are dead.  Assume the worst -"

"'And you'll either be right or pleasantly surprised,'" quoted Octavia with a roll of her eyes.  "We've heard it before, Marcus."

"He's right though," said Bellamy.  "We can't make Mrs. Griffin any promises.  We have to treat this like a series of unsolved murders.  That's the most likely explanation."

I nodded in agreement.  "I told her we'd do everything we could do," I said, swallowing hard to push down the vision of those warm brown eyes looking at me with worry and trust, trying not to think about her soft Chanel scent and the way her hair -

“Sandwiches,” said Jasper from behind me, interrupting this very dangerous train of thought, and I turned gratefully to see him enter with a big bag from the corner diner. “I thought we might get hungry.”

“Thanks,” I said, pulling a ham on rye out of his bag and accepting the stiff Old Fashioned Monty offered me from his tray (I would never tell Indra, but Monty’s were nearly as good as hers).  Raven climbed over the back of the sofa, hopped down next to me, and held out her hand for a sandwich too.

“Okay, Bell," she said through a mouthful of bread.  "Talk us through it.  What are we looking for?”

“Patterns,” I said. “Bellamy thinks these seven murders are connected. Right now his hunch is all we have to go on. So we need to figure out what these kids have in common.”

Bellamy placed his finger on the first pin. “Charleston, South Carolina,” he said.  "January 25th. The girl’s name was Nell Harper.”  Octavia's nimble fingers began clicking away.

“Age?” I asked, looking at a faded yearbook photo of a pretty blonde girl.

“Sixteen,” he said. “Only child of Donovan and Millie Harper. They’re Harper’s Hatpins, Ltd. She’s the granddaughter of Andrew Harper, who founded it.”

Monty gave a low whistle. “There’s a lot of dough right there,” he said approvingly, pulling up a chair beside the sofa.

“I’ll say there is,” said Bellamy.

“So they’re all rich kids?” Jasper asked, plating a sandwich for Octavia, who was too distracted to notice it, and then seating himself beside Monty. “Is that the connection?”

“It’s one of them,” I said, “but not the one that matters. The country’s full of rich kids. We need to know why these seven.”

“There was no ransom,” added Bellamy. “Not for any of them. No blackmail, no nothing. If the connection was family money, no one ever did anything about it. No, there’s something else going on here.”

“Who’s next?” asked Octavia. Bellamy followed the red string from Nell Harper in Charleston up north and stopped on a picture of a tough-looking girl with fierce eyes, staring right into the camera. “Boston,” said Bellamy. “February 12th. This is Molly Monroe. 19 years old. Parents are, well, on paper they own a chain of butcher shops, but –“

“Irish mob,” I said. “I’d bet my life on it.”  Bellamy nodded.

“That’s what I think too,” he said. “The family’s rolling in it. No way four Boston butcher shops brings in that kind of cash.”

Raven furrowed her brow thoughtfully.  "Totally different kind of money, then," she said.  "Rich parents isn't the pattern.  Those two girls would never have crossed paths."

“Exactly,” said Bellamy. “No visible connection. And then it just gets messier from there.” He followed the red thread from Boston all the way across the country to the West Coast, where his finger stopped on two photos pinned up side by side. “There’s a time jump,” he said, “and then two in a row. April 10th and April 19th. Anya and Lexa Arbor. Who _did_ know each other. In fact, they were cousins. Anya’s father and Lexa’s mother were the heirs of Arbor Logging Incorporated. They were taken a week apart in Portland, Oregon. Anya was eighteen and Lexa was two years younger.”

“Well,” said Raven thoughtfully, “that’s a damned powerful argument in favor of the killer being someone they knew. If I was Lexa, and my cousin vanished into thin air in the middle of the night, I’d never leave the house. I sure as hell wouldn’t go wandering around alone at night nine days later.”

“But if it was someone she trusted –“ said Jasper.

“Then she wouldn’t have thought twice about it,” finished Monty. “She’d have thought she was safe.”

Octavia's fingers paused in her typing, just for a moment, and I could feel some charged emotion coming from her corner of the room.  Monty's words sent a little shiver down my spine, and I took another long swig of my drink.

“The next one is funny too,” said Bellamy, and traced a line back from the Northwest to the Southeast. “Norfolk, Virginia,” he said. “Charlotte Cooper. Dad died a few years back. Mom’s the daughter of Texas oil money. They don’t even live in Norfolk, they were in town visiting family.”

I regarded the photo of Charlotte in astonishment.

“Good God,” I said. “She’s just a kid.”

“Ten,” said Bellamy soberly.

“When was this?”

“Fifth of May,” he said, “less than a month after Lexa.”

“Another break in the pattern," I said in frustration.  "Another outlier.  Subtract Charlotte, and they're all young women close to the same age, plenty old enough for -" I stopped myself just in time.

“It could still be prostitution,” said Octavia, who wasn’t afraid to say it out loud. She did not look up from her typewriter.  Her voice was stony and cold, and I knew that she wasn’t in that dingy back office with us anymore, she was in her mother’s kitchen, holding a knife in her hand while blood pooled around her bare feet. I shook my head, trying to sound reassuring.

“No,” I said, “I don’t think so. If they’re being kidnapped for sale, it would either be all kids or no kids. They’re specialists, these guys. They stick with what they know. Sixteen, nineteen, eighteen, sixteen – that’s the right age for someone with clients ready to buy right now. He’s not going to waste money keeping Charlotte Cooper alive until she ages up enough for the same clients. Besides.  If he was in the business of selling girls, he’d be taking kids nobody would miss. Not kids with rich parents and big-dollar lawyers. No,” I said, “whatever happened, it wasn’t that. I promise you, Octavia,” I said firmly, knowing that her heart was pounding with empathetic fear for those girls. “I promise you. It wasn’t that.”

“Good,” said Octavia tightly.

“Well, not _good,_ necessarily,” I corrected her mildly. “She's very probably dead.  All of them are."

“Better dead than sold,” she said in a quiet voice, and after what she'd been through, it wasn't for me to argue with her.

“Next victim,” said Jasper firmly, leaping to her rescue, and she smiled gratefully at him.

“Maya Vie,” Bellamy said. “June 1st, San Francisco. No mom. Dad’s a politician who inherited a bunch of land in Montana when a cattle rancher uncle died.”

“How old?”

“Fifteen.” Maya had soft dark hair and soft dark eyes and a wide, innocent smile and looked a lot younger than fifteen.

“That’s six,” said Octavia, and Bellamy nodded. “That brings us to the Griffin girl.”

“Clarke Griffin,” he said, following the red string from San Francisco back East, where an impossibly beautiful blonde girl smiled like the sun straight into the camera.  I tried hard not to think about how much she looked like her mother.  I tried not to think about her mother at all. “Twenty years old. Two weeks ago. June twenty-fifth. New York City.”

“Where in the city?” asked Monty.

“Mrs. Griffin doesn't know,” I said. “She went missing from the Plaza.  That's all we have so far.”

“Where’s her money from?” asked Monty.

“They're Griffin Railways,” I said. “The grandfather died and left everything to Clarke, but she doesn't inherit until later this year.  The entire fortune bypasses her parents and goes to her."

"Unless she dies before she turns 21," added Octavia.

"Right."

“The pattern is, there _is_ no pattern,” said Raven in frustration, and none of us disagreed with her. “Five girls don’t know each other, two are cousins. Six girls are taken from the cities they live in, one is a tourist. Six are roughly the same age but one of them’s ten. Oil money, railroad money, timber money, the Irish mob, a ranch in Montana, and Harper’s goddamned Hatpins.”

“They weren’t even taken in geographic order,” said Monty, pointing to the map. “Back and forth, all across the country. Oregon to Virginia to California to New York. It makes no sense.  None of this makes any sense.  If it's a serial killer, it's the least efficient serial killer I've ever heard of.”

Octavia rose to join her brother at the evidence wall and ran her own fingers delicately from pin to pin, thinking out loud.

“Nell Harper, Charleston,” she said softly. “Molly Monroe, Boston. Anya and Lexa Arbor, Portland. Charlotte Cooper, Norfolk. Maya Vie, San Francisco. Clarke Griffin, New York.” She stared, thinking hard. “What do they all have in common?” she said, half to herself, not really expecting an answer.

So we were all equally startled when she got one.

“Port cities,” said Jasper absently, his mouth full of sandwich, and looked puzzled as we all turned as one to stare at him.

“What?" he asked, confused. "What did I say?”

I burst out laughing.

“Christ Almighty,” I said, “leave it to the rum-runners. These girls aren't dead, Bellamy.  They were taken.  _But they're not dead."_

Bellamy turned and stared at me.  So did the others. 

I couldn't stop laughing, waves of elated relief washing over me, and I didn't care that I must have looked like a crazy person.

There it was.  The missing piece.

_Abigail Griffin could not have killed her daughter, because her daughter was still alive._

"What are you on about, Kane?" asked Bellamy irritably.  "Fill the rest of us in."

"Think, Bell," I said to him urgently.  " _Think._ If I wanted to kill a girl in San Francisco, there are a thousand places I could dump a body where it would never be found.  But what if I wanted to get a live girl _out_ of the city, without leaving a trace?"

"You're saying -"

"I'm saying you were right, Bellamy.  They _are_ connected.  In fact, I'd bet you every dollar in my bank account that at this very moment, they're _together._   Locked up in the cargo hold of a ship."

"Going where?"

"That," I said, "is what we have to find out."


	8. Chapter 8

Once we realized what we were looking for, everything began to look, if not necessarily clearer, just the faintest bit less bleak. I knew it wasn’t proof, but I felt it, all the way down to my bones, that the girls had been taken by boat, alive. It made so much sense. All the pieces fit. San Francisco, Boston, Portland . . . so many dark alleys and seedy bars and hidden shadowy corners to dump a body, if you really wanted to. If the girls were robbed, for example, or if they had witnessed a crime, and someone wanted to get rid of them, there would be no reason to leave the city to do it. Anonymity was the great urban virtue. There were few places easier to conceal a crime than New York or San Francisco.

But if you wanted a way to get a living, breathing captive out of the city without a trace, you could hardly do better than a locked cargo crate inside a shipping barge.  Uncomfortable for the girl, sure, but a whole lot simpler for the kidnapper.  No pesky witnesses at train stations. No chance of being pulled over by a cop for a busted taillight on a long dark stretch of highway.  Just toss a few bucks to a customs agent to get him to look the other way at the docks (at worst he'd think you were hauling illegally imported booze, and would ask to be cut in; the smart kidnapper would have prepared for this and made sure one of the cases really _did_ have booze in it).

Taken on their own, I didn’t wonder that each city’s police force had given up hope. One at a time, they were simply sad puzzles with no solution. Taken all together, though, the beginnings of a pattern were beginning to emerge.

Seven rich girls, taken from cities with major shipping ports and busy, populated docks. How much easier to look, when we now knew where we were looking. We were no closer to finding out where the ship might be, of course, but I hadn't realized until Jasper spoke just how terrified I'd been of having to tell Abigail Griffin that her daughter was dead.

Or – if I’m being completely honest – of having to face the question of whether or not Abigail Griffin had killed Clarke herself.

I had a slight queasy feeling about the fact that Lincoln hadn’t phoned back, but Jasper had remained back at the bar to take a message if he did. There was something in his voice that had concerned me. He had learned something about Jacob Griffin, I was sure of it; but he wasn’t ready to tell me what it was yet.

Which meant it probably wasn’t good.

Well, at least I knew Jacob Griffin wasn’t a murderer either, I thought. That was something. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling of unease. Lincoln was so rarely fazed by anything.

Still. It had been a good day so far. This was progress, real progress, and now that we knew Clarke Griffin had ended up at the docks, we had a place to begin.

We all spent the night at the speakeasy, and Monday we split up and fanned out around the city. Everyone had their marching orders. Bellamy and Octavia had gone to Indra’s, on related but separate missions. Bellamy could not, of course, contact anyone at the NYPD, which meant that we no longer had any source inside the police investigation.  But the Grounders did.  John Murphy was a moderately crooked cop they used from time to time when they were about to be targeted by a sting operation from Vice and they needed the police to politely look the other way. He was gruff and unpleasant and I wouldn’t have called him a friend, but he was a cop – a fairly senior one – and he always took Lincoln and Indra’s calls. He’d agreed to snoop around the bureau, then come meet Bellamy and fill him in on anything relevant he might find.

Octavia was pursuing a separate lead through Lincoln’s network. It was up to her to find someone inside their liquor import/export operation who might be able to tell us, based on their knowledge of maritime shipping routes, if all six of those girls could possibly have been taken by the same boat.

And Raven, meanwhile, had had a hunch - which I was inclined to let her go chase down - that someone had met Clarke near the Plaza to take her down to the docks. “She was in an evening dress,” Raven had pointed out. “That means evening shoes. She wouldn’t have walked there from Midtown. But whoever sent her to the docks, so they could nab her? They wouldn’t want a rich girl in a Paris dress getting in the back of a taxi and risk the driver remembering her. No, I bet money that our guy drove herself there himself, and then ditched the car.”

And “ditched the car,” of course, were Raven Reyes’ magic words. She had trotted off to hit up the city’s major seaports one by one, to see if any suspiciously abandoned vehicles had turned up in the area.

And where was I?

I was on the most perplexing errand of all. I was trying to find Abigail Griffin.

I tried several times Sunday and Monday to telephone her room at the Plaza to tell her we had a lead, but she didn’t answer. On a whim, I took a cab back to my office, where I’d left the kid at the corner cigarette stand with a note to give to Abigail in case she came by while I was out. He hadn’t seen her.

I decided to head upstairs to my office to make some phone calls from there. I thought I might try the Plaza again, and then give Indra a ring to see how things were going with the Blakes.

But I never got the chance.

I stepped out of the creaky wrought-iron elevator into the hallway, and immediately tensed up.

Something here didn’t feel right.

I stood still for a moment, the elevator at my back, and I tried to still my mind and spot the break in the pattern.

There were two doors to my right, which led to an empty office suite, and there were two doors to my left – one that led to a janitor’s closet, and then about ten feet down from that, the glass-plated door with my name that led to Octavia’s office.

Everything was still. Everything looked normal. There was nobody here but me. The noises were ordinary – just barking dogs and traffic noises from outside, no one moving around behind those doors. It looked the same as it had last time I’d seen it. What was wrong?

And then I realized what it was.

_Traffic noises._

Why, in the middle of an internal hallway with no windows, was I hearing traffic noises?

How was the sound getting in?

On a whim, my heart in my throat, I crept quietly to the door labeled MARCUS KANE, PRIVATE EYE, and turned the handle.

It opened effortlessly on its own – which it ought not to have done, since the last time any of us had been here I had watched Octavia lock it myself.

I pulled the door open and stepped inside.

The office had been ransacked.

Octavia’s desk was turned upside down, her files strewn everywhere, her typewriter smashed. The door from her office to mine was wide open, and I could see that mine also had been torn upside down. I followed the fluttering, flapping clouds of loose paper sailing all around their room to their source – solving the mystery of the unexplained traffic noises.

Every window in the office, Octavia’s and mine, had been smashed in.

Broken glass littered the wood floors like a sea of diamonds, catching the midday light amidst the heaps of paper on the floor.

I stood there for a moment, unable to think clearly, unable to put the pieces together, unable to comprehend the total destruction of the past eight years of my life. I just stood, feeling the crunch of glass under my feet, listening to the car horns that weren’t supposed to be there, and all I could think was, _This will break Octavia’s heart._

Finally, I pulled myself together and shook it off. I could see through the doorway that the burglars had left my whiskey on the windowsill – small mercy – so I crunched through the glass to enter my own office and take a swig.

That was when I saw it.

Every drawer in my desk had been pulled out and overturned – which meant both the office cash and my derringer were gone – and the surface had been swept bare of everything – pencils, papers, files – with one exception.

Someone had used a switchblade knife to carve the word “MURDERER” in rough, furious letters into the wooden top of the desk.

How did I know it was a switchblade? Because it was still there, jammed into the desktop with such brutal force that the wood around it had splintered.

Beneath the blade of the knife, pinned neatly in place to my desk like a target on a dartboard, was a photograph of Abigail Griffin.

A photograph of her three nights ago, leaving this very office.

The tip of the switchblade was stuck through her heart.

* * *

Monty answered the phone on the first ring.

“My office has been ransacked,” I said without preamble. “Someone tailed Abigail Griffin here. It’s bad.”

“Okay,” he said calmly, instantly digesting the information without questioning it. I blessed him for it. “I’ve got Jasper right here with me. Tell us what you need.”

“How secure is your building?”

“Secure,” said Monty. “Very.”

“Other tenants?”

“None,” he said. “Bar and offices on the third floor, manufacturing and brewing on the second, dummy laundromat on the first. Laundromat staff are all Grounders. Nobody can get in here without going past them, or past Jasper and me.”

“We need to go underground,” I said. “All of us. The Blake are at Indra’s, and Raven Reyes is wandering alone down by the docks. And I don’t know where Lincoln is. Get them back. Get everybody back. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Where are you going?”

“The Plaza Hotel,” I said, swallowing the cold knot of panic rising in my throat. “Abigail hasn’t answered her phone all day, and there’s a knife stuck through her chest pinned to the desk in my office.”

Monty swore under his breath.

“Call me every hour on the hour,” he said, “so I can report in to the others that you’re not dead. If I don’t hear from you I’m sending a guy to the Plaza to hunt you down. Got it? Every hour.”

“Got it,” I said. “Now go bring my team home.”

“We’re on it,” he said. “Go get Mrs. Griffin. And for Christ’s sake, Kane, be careful.”

I looked down at the knife in my desk.

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” I said, and hung up the phone.

No, said the kid at the corner cigarette stand when I confronted him on my way out the door. Nobody suspicious had gone into the building all that day.

“You sure?” I pressed him.

“I’m sure,” he said reassuringly. “No one’s been through that door all day long except the repairmen.”

“The what?”

“The repairmen,” he said. “The guys that went up to fix the broken elevator.”

_Dammit._

“The elevator wasn’t broken,” I said, “and I need you to call this number and ask for Monty and tell him if any of those men come back. Can you do that?”

He nodded, eyes wide. “Everything okay, Mr. Kane?”

“No,” I said. “Those men came here looking for something, and they didn’t find it. They’re going to be angry. That means they’re going to be dangerous. If anyone asks,” I said, as I slipped him ten dollars and walked away, “I was never here.”

“Got it,” said the kid, trying valiantly not to look frightened. “You were never here.”

Then I turned my back on the offices of Marcus Kane, Private Eye, crossed the street, and left it behind me – with no idea when, or if, I would set foot inside there again.

* * *

I pulled my hat down low over my face as I passed through the opulent Fifth Avenue entrance to the Plaza Hotel, scanning the bustling lobby for suspicious faces or behavior – or for any sign of Abigail – as I made my way to the front desk.

“May I help you, sir?” said the cheerful pretty girl behind the front desk.

“I’m trying to reach my sister,” I said, “I’ve been trying her room all day and nobody’s answering.”

“Which room?”

“625.”

“Oh, the Griffins!” she said, comprehension dawning. “Oh, you must not have heard. She’s gone. The room’s empty. No wonder you couldn’t reach her.”

“Not the blonde,” I said. “I know she's gone.  I meant the woman in the other room."

"Right.  She's gone."

"I'm not talking about the girl," I said impatiently.  "I know Clarke Griffin is gone.  I'm looking for the mother.  I'm looking for Abigail."

"Yes," she said, "that's what I'm trying to tell you.  Mrs. Griffin left.  Both rooms are empty."

“Mrs. Griffin did _what_?”

“She checked out this morning,” said the girl with a frown. “She didn’t tell you?”

“Did she leave a forwarding address?”

“You don’t know your sister’s –“

“Just tell me.”

She huffed a little and flipped through her notes, then shook her head.

“What about a residential address?” I asked. “Did she give you her home address, when she checked in? I know she lives in the city, I just don’t know where.”

The girl raised a suspicious eyebrow at me. I sighed, and gave up.

“No,” I said. “She’s not my sister. I’m a private investigator, and she’s in danger, and I need you to help me find her. _Quietly._ ” I pulled my business card out of my wallet and showed it to her. “That’s me,” I said. “Marcus Kane, P.I. Someone is after Abigail Griffin, and I’m trying to find her.”

The girl looked stunned, and her mouth opened and closed a few times without a sound before she finally swallowed hard and nodded.

“She’s stayed here before,” said the girl. “With the daughter. Once or twice a year. We always remember them because, well –“

“Because they have a lot of money,” I said. “Sure.”

“There might be something in the office,” she said. “I’ll check.” And she disappeared behind the front counter through a mahogany door with a brass plate labeled MANAGER in intricate script.

She was gone a long time, and I found myself fidgeting uncomfortably. It could be anyone. It could be anyone in this lobby. It could be someone who followed me from the office. It could be someone waiting for me the moment I stepped outside. It could be –

“Mr. Kane?” said a polished male voice from behind me, and I looked up. The girl had vanished, and a dapper gray-haired man in a bespoke suit who was clearly several rungs above her was standing in her place. “I’m very sorry,” he said politely, “but we can’t give out guest information. But if you leave me a way to reach you, I can pass it along to Mrs. Griffin if she happens to be in touch.”

“She won’t,” I said, and I turned abruptly to go, leaving him staring at the back of my head behind me.

I was out the door and halfway down the street when I felt a hand on my arm. I whirled around and saw a young man in a Plaza concierge uniform.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “If I startled you. I just – I heard you at the counter, and –“

“You were the concierge on duty that night,” I said suddenly, Abigail's story returning to me in a flash. “The one who helped Mrs. Griffin.”

“Hardly,” he said, looking down at the ground and shuffling his feet, and I realized that he had been blaming himself for not being more help. “I didn’t even see which direction she went,” he said.

“You couldn’t be expected to be watching every guest,” I said.

“Still,” he said. “I want to help. She was nice. A nice girl. They both were. And now you said – you said the mother is in danger too?” I nodded.

“So if there’s anything you can tell me that might help me figure out where she might be,” I said, “or where she lives, now’s the time.”

“I know exactly where she lives,” said the concierge, and I stared at him.

“What?”

“She forgot her evening furs, for the ballet,” he said. “Last week.  She called down to see if we could send a boy to get them. Well, a woman like Abigail Griffin, she doesn’t have the kind of fur coats you would entrust to just any messenger boy off the street.”

“You went to her apartment to get the coat yourself,” I said, a wave of excitement rising in my chest. He nodded back, eyes shining.

“740 Park Avenue,” he said. “She has the whole twelfth floor.” In a flash of inspiration, he pulled a card out of his pocket and handed it to me. “I’m at the desk until six p.m.,” he said. “Tell the doorman you’re there from the Plaza to pick up Mrs. Griffin’s burgundy Valentino.”

“Burgundy Valentino?” I said. “Why?”

“Because that’s the kind of thing a Plaza concierge visits a lady’s apartment for,” he said. “The doorman will call my desk to confirm that I sent a messenger over and he’ll buzz you right up. That’s what happened with the furs.”

“You’re a good man,” I said, looking at his nametag. “Finn.”

“I hope you find her,” he said. “I hope you find both of them." 

“I will,” I said. “Thank you, Finn. You’ve been a great help.” And I pulled the hat down low over my face and set off for Park Avenue.

A street clock chimed seven as I departed, and I remembered my promise to Monty, so I stopped in at a bustling, crowded diner to borrow the telephone and call back to check in.

Jasper picked up.

"Where are the kids?" I said.

"Everyone's here," he said.  "Bellamy and Octavia just arrived, and Raven arrived about an hour ago."

"Oh, thank God," I said.  "Did they find anything?"

"Yeah, they did, but Kane -"

"Put Raven on for a second, I want to ask her -"

"No, Kane, listen -"

"Just for a minute, I want to see if she -"

"No, Kane, listen to me, Lincoln is back," he said, and his tone silenced me.  "He's been waiting for you."

My heart stopped.

"Put him on the phone," I said, looking nervously over my shoulder at the crowd of families enjoying their dinners all around me and wondering if one of those apple-cheeked mothers or smiling young courting couples nearby was listening in on my phone call.  I heard Jasper call Lincoln's name, and then the sound of the telephone changing hands.

"Are you in public?" he asked, without greeting me.

"Yes."

"Then don't talk," he said.  "Don't react.  Don't say my name out loud.  Just listen."  I swallowed hard.  "You need to find Abigail Griffin," he said, and you need to find her _now._ There's about to be a citywide manhunt to track that woman down and arrest her for murder."

"He can't," I whispered fiercely, trying to keep my voice low.  "He can't do that.  He has no evidence.  The girls are still alive. She didn't kill Clarke.  We _know_ she didn't kill Clarke."

"It's not about Clarke," said Lincoln.  "It's about her husband.  NYPD just fished Jacob Griffin's body out of the East River."


	9. Chapter 9

Abigail Griffin’s apartment was – like Abigail herself – both gorgeous as hell, and difficult to read.

The magical incantation of “burgundy Valentino” had worked exactly as Finn predicted and gotten me into the elevator and up to the twelfth floor without a hitch. But Finn, of course, could not do anything about the fact that Abigail Griffin wasn’t inside that apartment when I got there. There was no trace of her.

I couldn’t case a joint as fast as Octavia, but I hadn’t entirely lost my touch. I made a swift circuit room by room, taking in the elegant and expensive furnishings, the silk draperies, the lush hardwoods, and the general atmosphere of money that permeated the whole building. I got nowhere. Her bed hadn’t been slept in, her counters and tabletops were clean and bare. It looked for all the world as though she had done exactly what she said she had done: checked into the Plaza close to three weeks ago with her daughter and not returned since.

_So then where the hell was she?_

It wasn’t until I looped through the kitchen on my way back towards the door (an empty Valentino garment bag over my shoulder to complete the deception with the doorman) that I figured out the thing that had been puzzling me since I walked in the door.

A large bottle of expensive red wine sat on the countertop, with a clean wine glass beside it.

One wine glass.

I started suddenly, and returned to the bedroom, a thought beginning to grow in my mind, and opened the closets again.

There were no men’s clothes in the closet.

There was no shaving brush in the bathroom.

In the small parlor off the kitchen, there were two cozy armchairs facing a small fireplace.   One armchair had a throw blanket over the back of it, an end table pulled up close within reach, and a book resting on the arm. The other was bare.

Jacob Griffin did not live here.

Nobody but Abigail had ever lived here.

So where – up until he wound up at the bottom of the East River – had Abigail’s husband lived?

It was in contemplating the lack of a husband’s personal effects throughout the house that I suddenly realized the biggest, most obvious thing I had missed:

There were no personal effects in the apartment _at all._

Where there ought to have been framed canvases by her Paris-dwelling painter daughter, there was expensive but impersonal art bought off the wall of some gallery. Either Abigail Griffin had the world’s most thorough housekeeper, or no one had ever cooked in that kitchen. Where there might have been mismatched china or heirloom dishes in the kitchen – mother’s wedding china or grandmother’s silver tea service – everything was brand-new.

There was not one single solitary photograph of Clarke. Or, indeed of anyone.

It was unsettling – like empty stage scenery, before the set dressers show up to add props.

The only thing I noticed in the entire apartment which appeared to show any sign of personality – the only thing that did not look peeled straight off the pages of a home catalog – was a blue-and-rose Turkish carpet in the center of the living room’s lush hardwood floor. The rest of the living room was all done up in rich shades of white and cream with gold accents, so the lovely (but out of place) rug drew my eye as I walked over it and back out the apartment door.

I was halfway down the hall before I stopped, turned, and froze.

Something was not right about that carpet, and I suddenly remembered what it was.

It matched the draperies in the bedroom.

It was not an iconoclastic design choice. It was simply in the wrong place.

Why would you move a four-foot rectangle of carpet sized for the foot of a bed into a different room, in the middle of a bare expanse of hardwood floor, where it matched nothing?

There was only one reason.

I dropped the garment bag on the floor, pulled the key back out of my pocket, and let myself back in. Tremulously, hesitatingly, I bent down and lifted back the corner of the carpet to reveal the golden hardwoods beneath it. And there it was.

Abigail Griffin’s curiously impersonal white living room did, in fact, turn out to have one rather vivid splash of color.

* * *

The clock on the mantel struck eight just then, startling the life out of me, and I remembered my promise to Monty. I called the bar, and got Octavia.

“Did you find anything?”

“I found something,” I said, “but it isn't good. Is Lincoln with you?”

“I can get him. What do you need?”

“I need him to find out if Jacob Griffin drowned,” I said, “or if he was dead by the time he hit the water.”

“Oh, I can tell you that,” she said. “Single gunshot wound to the chest.”

“That,” I said, unable to tear my eyes from the vicious, rust-hued bloodstain that had soaked into the hardwood floor beneath the square of wrong carpet, “is what I was afraid of.”

“What do you have, Kane?”

“I’m no closer to knowing why Jacob Griffin was murdered,” I said slowly, “but I’m fairly certain I know _where.”_

“Oh, Jesus,” said Octavia. “Blood at the apartment?”

“Blood at the apartment.”

“And she’s still missing? Dammit, doesn’t she know that this just makes her look guilty? The longer she’s on the run, the worse it looks.”

“You don’t have to tell me that,” I said. “But there’s no sign of her. It doesn’t look like she’s been here since she left for the Plaza. It hardly even looks like she _lives_ here.”

“Are you on your way back?” she asked. “Should I come down there and help you look?”

“You’re staying right where you are,” I said, “all of you. Nobody is leaving Monty and Jasper’s until we know what’s going on.”

There was a terse silence.

“Monty told me,” she said. “About the office. About . . . what you found.”

“I wish he hadn’t done that.”

“Kane, we’re in way over our heads with this one.”

“I know, kid. You want to back out, you just say the word.”

“No way,” she said. “We’re in this with you. All of us. I just wish . . .” She stopped. “I wish you hadn’t been alone,” she said. “When you got there. When you saw. I wish you hadn’t had to see it all alone.”

“I’m okay, kid,” I said. “I’m really okay.”

“I know,” she said. “Just come back soon.”

“I’ll be there in less than an hour,” I said. “I’m going to swing by home and grab a change of clothes. I can run down to your place too, if you want. And then I’ll be right there.”

“Take a cab,” she said. “Don’t walk.”

“I’ll leave the motor running,” I promised. “I’ll throw pajamas and toothbrushes in a bag and run out the door. I’m coming back, Octavia, I promise. Tell Monty and Jasper to send out for groceries and put the coffee on. I’ll be there in an hour, and it’s going to be a long night.”

“Don’t do anything stupid,” she said. “Get here safe.”

“See you in an hour,” I said, and rang off.

“Find what you were looking for?” asked the doorman, as I exited the elevator with my dummy garment bag over my shoulder.

“In a manner of speaking,” I muttered, and stepped back out onto the street, wondering if I would ever be any closer to finding out who was picking off the entire Griffin family, one by one.

* * *

I grabbed a pair of suitcases from Bellamy and Octavia’s hall closet and threw in the bare essentials – pajamas, toiletries, a few changes of clothes, and both their guns – before heading upstairs to do the same for me. After that afternoon’s experience in the office, I half-expected to find my apartment smashed up and ransacked to pieces, but it looked the same as it had when I’d left it. Whoever had tailed Abigail to my office was looking for her, then; not for me. With any luck, they had no clue where I lived.

Still. Better safe than sorry. The speakeasy was our new home until this was over.

It was while I was in the bathroom, gathering up my shaving kit, that I heard the sound, and froze.

Someone was here.

Someone was inside my apartment.

Whoever it was, they were near enough that I could hear them breathing, rapid and shallow, very nearby. I reached into my packing case, pulled the razor back out of it – the closest weapon to hand – and very, very slowly opened the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet until it reached an angle where it reflected a full view of my bedroom back to me.

There, in a dim far corner, far away from the window and door, huddled into a tiny ball with her shaking arms wrapped around her knees, was Abigail Griffin.

I dropped the razor blade into the sink and in four long strides I was across the bedroom and kneeling down at her side.

Her head was buried in her arms, and she was crying. She sounded like she had been crying for a long time. I reached out a hand to touch her shoulder, and she flinched as though I’d pressed a hot coal against her skin.

“Abigail,” I said to her gently, softly, like I was coaxing a frightened animal out into the open. “Abigail. It’s just me.”

She lifted her head and looked at me then, her dark hair hanging in loose tangles around her drawn white face. Her eyes were big and dark with panic, and I could tell she was looking through me, as though I was hardly there.

“Abigail,” I said again. “Abigail.” And that was when I noticed the angry slash of red across her cheek.

“What happened here?” I whispered, reaching out a hand to touch it. “Who hurt you?” She didn’t say anything, just stared at me, blankly, a little wildly, but this time when she felt my fingers on her skin, she didn’t pull away. I pressed the cut on her cheek to see how deep it was, but my touch met nothing but silky, perfect, smooth skin.

It wasn’t a cut.

The blood on her face wasn’t hers.

I felt a cold chill prickle at the back of my neck, and I reached down to pry apart her arms, which were wrapped tightly around her bent knees. I took both of her hands in mine and turned them palm up.

Even in the dim light, I could see that from fingertip to elbow, Abigail Griffin’s once-white hands were stained with dried blood.

That was when she finally spoke.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured hoarsely, in a voice that sounded rusty from disuse. “I didn’t know where else to go.”


	10. Chapter 10

I stared down at her rust-red hands. She stared down at them too, as though she was seeing them for the very first time.

“Abigail,” I said urgently. “I have to get you out of here. We have to go. There’s a cab waiting to take us somewhere safe.”

“There’s nowhere safe,” she whispered, and she was still looking at some far-off point on the other side of the room, not seeing me at all. I realized she was in shock. She had no idea what had happened, or where she was.

She had no idea what she had done.

My heart was pounding in my chest like a bass drum. _Get her out of here, get her out of here, get her out of here_ , it insisted.

I took one of her blood-stained hands in mine. The blood was dry, had become part of her skin. Like the stain on the floorboards. Like the guilt on her conscience.

Like the fear in my heart, that I had fallen in love with a murderer.

“Abigail, I can help you,” I said, taking her face in my hands and trying to get her to look at me. “I can help you. We can get through this. But I have to get you out of here. And you have to tell me the truth. You have to tell me exactly what happened at your apartment.”

“The apartment . . .” She closed her eyes and leaned her head back, and her whole body shrank back further and further into the corner of the wall. “No, no, no,” she whispered, shaking her head. “Don’t go back there. Can’t go back there. Don’t go in the apartment. Don’t go in the apartment.”

“Abigail."

“Don’t open the door, Abigail, don’t open the door . . .” she murmured to herself, and my heart began to beat faster. She was no longer there with me, she was back in the living room of her apartment, covered in blood, with a gun in her hand, and I had no idea what to do.

“Listen to me,” I said. “The police know. They found the body. Everyone’s looking for you. We have to go. I can protect you if you come with me. Right now. They’re going to go to your apartment and they’re going to see where you moved the carpet to hide the bloodstain and they’re going to put it together just like I put it together, and if you’re not in a safe place when they do –“

Something happened inside her eyes just then, the faintest flicker of comprehension, and she looked at me directly for the first time.

“What carpet?” she said.

It was the first lucid thing she’d said since I found her, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

“The blue carpet,” I said, “the one you moved from your bedroom to cover up the stain.”

She stared.

“The one I –“ Her eyes were blank and puzzled, and she had a curious expression on her face.

Then, unaccountably, horribly, she burst out laughing.

She laughed and laughed and laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant laugh. It was an awful one, high-pitched and hysterical.

 _“You think I killed him,”_ she said through gasps. “Oh God. Oh God. You think it was _me._ The police think it was me, everyone thinks it was me, and _you think so too_.” Her shoulders shook with harsh, thin laugh-sobs and tears streamed down her face. “God Almighty,” she said, “what hope is there, then? It’s all over. I should just go turn myself in. If even _you_ think I’m guilty, what chance do I have with a jury?”

“Abigail –“

“They’re going to hang me,” she said, the laughter escalating into a horrifying hybrid of laugh and scream. “Thelonious Jaha is going to see me hanged for this. Or he’ll shoot me in the head himself. Goddamn you, Marcus Kane, you were the only hope I had left.”

She had slipped over the edge from shock into outright hysteria, and I figured I had two choices to jolt her out of it. I didn’t want to slap her, so I did the other thing instead.

I took her face in both of my hands and I kissed her. Hard.

Instantly a change came over her. Her mouth parted and she kissed me back, and her tightly-coiled body began to soften and untangle itself. She pulled away after a moment, but when she looked at me again, the dark cloud had left her eyes and she was Abigail Griffin again. We looked at each other in silence for a long moment.

“Hi,” I said, unable to think of anything else. She laughed again, but not the banshee keening from before – her real laugh, her sweet laugh, the lines at her eyes and mouth crinkling with amusement.

“Hi,” she said back.

“Can you stand?” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m okay. I can stand. I’m okay now. I’m sorry I scared you.”

“Don’t apologize,” I said, helping her gently to her feet. “I’m the one that owes you an apology.”

“Because you thought I shot my husband.”

“Yes,” I said, not quite able to deny it.

“I didn’t do it, Marcus,” she said. “I came home and –“

“We’ll do all that in a minute,” I said. “But we need to wash your hands and get you out of this building. We need to get you to a safe place.”

“Finish your packing,” she said, “I’ll go wash my hands.”

I threw the rest of my things in the suitcase and closed it, then realized I’d forgotten my shaving kit where I’d dropped it in the bathroom when I first heard Abigail breathing. I opened the bathroom door and saw her standing still, staring at the reddened sink, bloody water slowly trailing off her white hands, and I knew she was about to fall into the dark place again.

“I could hear him on the other side of the door,” she said distantly. “I could hear him. He was still alive. He was trying to get up. He was trying to tell me something.”

“Abigail –“

“I thought maybe I could stop the bleeding, so I put my hands on his chest, where the bullet wound was, I thought if I could keep him from bleeding out and call an ambulance . . . But it was too late. I was too late. He died right there. He died right underneath my hand.”

“Abigail, sweetheart, I need you to listen to me. We have to go.”

“His blood is on my hands, Marcus,” she whispered, and I saw her eyes go dark and unfocused again. “I’m never going to get it off.”

I stepped in close to her then, and took the bar of soap from the side of the faucet, and I took her left hand in both of mine. Firmly, tenderly, I washed the hand clean, watching the foamy bubbles go from red to pink and then finally to white again as Jacob Griffin’s blood ran down the drain of my bathroom sink. Then I took her other hand and did the same. Her hands were small and soft, and there was a terrible part of me that reveled in this opportunity to touch her openly, to stroke her skin, to hold her hands in mine. The wicked Marcus Kane wanted very, very badly to push her back up against the bathroom door and kiss her again as her wet hands trailed warm soapy water all over my skin.

But the good Marcus Kane didn’t let him.

Instead, I took a soft towel from the rack and dried her hands, holding it up to show her that she had not stained it.  It was damp, but still white as snow.

“All gone,” I said. “Clean. You’re okay now.” I dabbed the streak of blood off her cheek and smoothed back her hair. “You’re okay.”

She nodded silently.

“Time to go?”

“Time to go,” I said. She followed me out into the hall, where I handed her Octavia’s suitcase, hoisted Bellamy’s and mine, and headed back outside to where the cab was waiting for us in the street.

* * *

The moment Octavia saw Abigail walk through the door of the speakeasy and pull off my overcoat to reveal the blood on her dress, she took charge immediately. There was something almost terrifying in the way she echoed her mother in that moment, and I knew Bellamy saw it too. He quietly took himself into the war room and remained there until Abigail emerged clean.

“Raven can do this,” I had said to Octavia in a quiet voice as I saw her dig a towel out of the closet next to the washroom. “You don’t have to –“

“I’m the only one who knows,” she said firmly. “She needs somebody who knows.”

I didn’t argue.

So Octavia took Abigail’s hand, led her into the washroom, closed the door, and removed not just Abigail’s stained dress but all the blood that had soaked into her skin underneath it. There was blood in her hair that had trickled down and stained the skin of her back, blood on her breasts and collarbone and throat where she had leaned her whole body down against Jacob Griffin’s rising and falling chest in a futile effort to keep the blood inside him. The hands had only been the beginning. The hands had been only the part you could see. But her husband’s blood was all over her body.

Octavia was right, though. Octavia knew exactly what to do.

She removed Abigail’s clothes and pulled the pins out of her hair and helped her into the shower, closed the curtain and sat down to wait as Abigail washed away the last traces of Jacob Griffin.

There were many advantages to our location at Jasper and Monty’s, holed up above the false front of a Grounder-guarded laundromat. First, of course, was security; the staff below were all Grounders, all armed, and the speakeasy entrance was concealed, so we were as safe upstairs as if we had been holed up inside Fort Knox.

But the second – which I hadn’t considered the benefit of until that night – was that it was a real laundromat.

A laundromat run by criminals.

So when Octavia reached through the door and handed off the gray gabardine frock to Raven, exchanging it for Monty's spare clean pajamas, Raven took the fabric bundle downstairs to the Grounder woman at the front counter, who unfolded it, shook it out, cast an appraising professional eye over the dark stiff patches of dried blood all up and down the bodice, nodded and said, “I’ll call you when it’s ready.” 

Not even a raised eyebrow. 

(“I'm bringing all my laundry here from now on,” quipped Raven upon her return.)

When Abigail emerged from the shower (I was doing my best not to dwell on it, sitting out in the bar with the others and listening to the water running, but I couldn't help myself, picturing the steam rising off her clean pink body), Octavia braided back her wet hair for her and helped her change into Monty’s pajamas. When they came out of the washroom twenty minutes later, Octavia had her arm around Abigail, who looked alert and composed. She had stopped shaking, and gratefully accepted the drink Jasper pressed into her hand.

“There’s food on its way,” he said. “Monty ran out to the diner for provisions. Is there anything else we can do for you?”

“No,” she said. “Thank you.”

Bellamy, safe from the flashbacks of his blood-covered sister now that everyone was clean again, reemerged from the war room, a little shaken but back to his old self, and he reached out to take Abigail's hand in his own.

"You're safe here," he said.  "There's no safer place in the whole city for you to be right now than here, with us.  We're going to protect you, and we're going to find who killed your husband, and we're going to bring your daughter home." 

Abigail’s eyes filled with tears as she nodded silently, and pressed his hand in both of hers.

“Thank you,” she finally said, and my heart ached so desperately for the sorrow in her voice that I forgot to reproach Bellamy for breaking the rule he had set himself:

The rule about not making any promises to Abigail Griffin that we might not be able to keep.


	11. Chapter 11

"They're just kids," said Abigail in a tone of horror-struck wonder, tracing her finger along the red lines from city to city.  "All of them.  They're _kids_."

I watched her take it all in for a moment, watched the tight knot of mother-anxiety that had not left her even beside Jacob's dead body multiply itself by six as she thought about all the other grieving, worried parents waiting for their daughters to come home.

"If there's anything you can think of," I said, "anything at all -"

She nodded without taking her eyes off the board.

"There may be a connection," she said.  "They may have crossed paths with Clarke.  If there is, I'll find it.  We have to help these girls.  If the police won't do it, we have to."

I put my hand on her shoulder, and she turned and looked at me. 

"I'm on the team, Kane," she said to me firmly.  "I'm here for whatever you need."

"No," I said.  "You're the client."

"I'll be both."

"I'm not sure you can."

"I can't sit here all day with nothing to do, or I'll go insane," she said.  "I'm not debating this with you.  It's my family.  My husband.  My daughter.  I'm on the team."

I liked her like this, sturdy and calm and strong, but with all her diamond-sharp edges sanded off.  Her face was bare of makeup, her hair pulled back in a damp braid from which a few strands had come loose and dried into loose tendrils that softened the crisp angles of her face.  In Monty's white cotton pajamas, which were just ever so slightly too large for her, she looked clean and honest and young.  She had no mask on.  The intoxicating haze of Chanel and money that had swirled around her when she first strode into my office was gone, and she was simply herself.  I had a feeling not many people ever saw this Abigail Griffin.  I hadn't thought it was possible to desire her more than I had that first night in my office, but there was something in the V-shaped expanse of rose-cream skin visible beneath the collar of the white pajamas that completely unstitched me. 

We looked at each other for a long time.

"Marcus," she began softly, moving ever so faintly closer, but I never heard what she was about to say next.

"Dinner's here!" piped in Jasper's never-more-unwelcome voice, as he popped his head into the war room.  "We're having pot roast.  I thought Abigail deserved something a little more substantial than a sandwich."

"Thank you," she said, tearing her eyes from mine and returning to herself, turning to Jasper with a smile.  "We're coming."  And she did not look back at me as she followed him out the door.

* * *

"It's important that you know," said Bellamy, after we'd all sat down to dinner and introductions had been made, "that we all believe you.  That you didn't kill Jacob.  That you had nothing to do with what happened to Clarke.  But we can't help you if we don't have the whole story.  So you have to tell us what happened."

She nodded.  She still seemed a little pale, a little fragile, but she had steeled herself, she had known this was coming, and the haunted look I'd seen in her eyes when I first found her was long since gone.  She was frightened but she was strong. 

"There was a letter," she said.  "It came to the hotel.  An anonymous letter.  It was written on Plaza hotel stationery and slipped underneath my door."

"When was this?" asked Octavia, who was taking notes and eating at the same time.  Abigail thought for a moment. 

"Last night," she said.  "Around eight."

"What did it say?"

"Nothing," she said.  "It was just my address.  I thought - I was hoping -"

"You thought it was something to do with Clarke."

"Yes," she said.  "I ran out the door and into a cab and got there as fast as I could.  I could hear noises inside before I even opened the door.  I could hear . . . Jacob was -"  She faltered a little.  Raven took her hand.  She swallowed hard and shook it off.  "I'm sorry," she said.  "Yes.  I could hear Jacob, well, I didn't know it was him, but I could hear him.  I opened the door, and there he was.  Lying in the middle of the living room.  He was on his back - he'd been shot in the chest - blood was still pouring out of him.  I ran over, I put my hands over the wound, I thought maybe I could stop it, but I . . . it was too late."  She closed her eyes for a moment and fought back tears.  "After that, I just . . . I didn't know what to do.  I couldn't call the police.  Jaha already thinks I killed my own daughter, I couldn't let his men find me sitting there next to my husband's dead body.  I tried you at your office, but nobody answered.  I didn't know what to do, or where to go.  So I just . . . I just sat there.  I took his hand and I sat next to his body and tried to think about what to do next.  I don't know how long I sat there, but by the time I finally came back to myself, the sun was coming up.  I was afraid of being found there - I was afraid to be in that room with Jacob any longer - so I just left and started walking.  It was still mostly dark - nobody noticed my hands - I didn't even notice them myself, until you did.  I went to your office, but the building was locked.  The boy on the corner told me where you lived, so I went there.  I told the landlady I was your sister and she let me in to wait.  And the rest you know."

"Wait a minute," I said.  "You're leaving out the part where you walked into the lobby of the Plaza hotel stained up to your elbows in dried blood."

She looked at me, puzzled.

"What on earth are you talking about?"

"This morning."

"I wasn't at the hotel this morning."

"Yes, you were," I said.  "When you came back to check out."

"Check out?" she said.  "No. All my things are still at the Plaza."

"No, they're not," I said.  "I was just there.  I was there this afternoon, looking for you.  They told me you'd checked out that morning."

She shook her head furiously. "No," she said.  "No, I didn't."

"Then why would they think you did?"

"Because they're setting her up," Bellamy cut in, and we all turned to stare at him.  "Someone took her daughter.  Then they killed her husband.  They could have done it anywhere, but they did it in her apartment.  Then they dumped the body in the river - to wash away the _real_ evidence - but left the carpet as a deliberate clue pointing to the bloodstain.  And then they made it look like Abigail had gone on the run."

"They cleaned up after themselves," I said.  "It was spotless when I arrived, except the stain on the floor.  They came back after you left."

"No," said Lincoln.  "They didn't.  They never left."

Abigail and I both turned to look at him, the same cold horror rising in both our chests.

"They fished out the body around six p.m.," he said.  "Coroner's report said it was dumped shortly after dawn.  And if the blood from his wound was still flowing when you got there, it wouldn't have been long enough for the killer to get very far.  Either whoever shot Jacob Griffin was watching the apartment for you to leave so they could go back for the body -"

"Or they never left," Bellamy finished.  "They were in there all night, with you.  Waiting to finish the job."

Abigail shivered.  I wanted to put my arms around her, but the room was full of people; so I simply looked it, trying to give her with my eyes the comfort I wanted to give her with my body but couldn't.

"Why didn't they kill her?" asked Jasper suddenly, then stopped himself.  "No offense," he mumbled at Abigail's sharp look. 

"Jasper," said Octavia warningly.

"No, he's right," said Abigail. "If they wanted to make it look like I'd gone on the run - if they wanted to pin the murder on me to deflect from the real killer - it would be so much easier if they had made me disappear too.  The smart thing to do would be to check me out of the hotel, leave a train ticket under my name in some conspicuous place, create a false trail, kill me, and then whisk me out of town in the trunk of a car to dump the body.  Then everyone would assume I'd done it, and fled town."

"Well, sure," I said, "that's the smart thing if all I want to do is kill a man and get away with it by framing a more visible suspect.  But that only works if the intended victim was Jacob Griffin."

"Who else could it be?" asked Octavia.

"Her," I said, looking at Abigail.  "They didn't just want Jacob dead.  They want Abigail to hang for it."

She suddenly went very, very pale.

"I think it's time," I said, "for us to have a conversation we should have had the first night you came to me."

"What's that?"

"I need to know who hates you so much that they want you dead, Abigail," I said frankly. "I need to know who your enemies are." 

Everyone at the table tensed up at this, and shifted a little uncomfortably.  Everyone except Abigail, who looked at me with the smile of a teacher whose prize pupil has finally asked the right question.  She sat back in her chair and took a long, deep swig of her whiskey.

"That's a very good question," she said.  "Let's start with the one in this room."


	12. Chapter 12

“If you’re going to shoot me,” said Abigail, knocking back the last of her drink and rising from her chair, “get it over with.” I stared at her, my head spinning, the change in her tone and demeanor sending a chill through my entire body. I looked wildly around the table, staring from one to the other – Octavia, Bellamy, Jasper, Lincoln, Monty, Raven – but saw no guilt or even comprehension on any of their faces. Just baffled confusion, tinged with fear. We all looked at each other uncomfortably, desperately wondering which of us she meant . . . before we all, as one, realized Abigail wasn’t looking at us.

She was looking at the door.

“Hello, Indra,” she said in a calm, almost conversational voice to the woman in the doorway aiming a wicked-looking revolver at her heart.

“Hello, Abigail,” said Indra. “It’s been a long time.”

“Indra, what the hell is going on?” snapped Octavia, leaping from her seat.

“Stay where you are,” said Indra to the girl, without tearing her eyes from Abigail. “This is between her and me."

"Yes," said Abigail without taking her eyes off Indra's gun.  "Why doesn't everybody sit back down.  You too, Kane," she added without looking at me.  "Don't talk.  And don't try anything stupid.  I don't want anyone getting shot today." She and Indra continued to size each other up as everyone hesitantly moved back towards the table and resumed their seats. 

Everyone except for Lincoln.

“She’s a friend, Indra,” admonished Lincoln mildly. “She’s one of us. Put the gun down.”

“I’ve waited a long time for this,” hissed Indra to Abigail, ignoring him. “I’ve waited a long time to have one of you in my sights. Years and years, I’ve waited. And if you think I’m not going to take the chance to shoot you right now –“

"That's not justice," said Abigail, and her voice was surprisingly compassionate.  Almost gentle.  "That's _vengeance._ It won't bring back anyone you've lost."

"No," said Indra, drawing closer, "but it's sure as hell going to make me feel better."

"We can end this, Indra," said Abigail in a low voice.  "You and me.  All of us.  We can stop him.  But you have to trust me."

"Stop _who_?" I started to say, but a gesture from Lincoln silenced me. 

"Trust?" Indra retorted incredulously.  "No.  When Grounders trust your people, they get killed."

"Those men are _not_ her people, Indra," he said firmly, stepping in front of Abigail and blocking her body with his own, "and you and I both know that."

Octavia struggled to rise out of her seat but Raven put a firm hand on her shoulder and pulled her back down. "Don't ever get between two Grounders in a fight," she whispered.  "Stay right where you are."

"Do you honestly think, half-clan boy," Indra snapped at Lincoln, "that I won't shoot you to get to her?"

Lincoln didn't answer right away, but looked over at Octavia with a fond half-smile.

"Do it, then," he said, palms open in a gesture of surrender.  "If you have to.  But you'd better go home and get your affairs in order first, because Octavia won't be letting you walk out of here alive."

All you had to do to know he was telling the truth was look at Octavia's stony face.

"I don't want to hurt you, Lincoln," said Indra, "and I don't want to hurt Octavia.  This would be much simpler if you just got out of my way."

"You know I can't do that," he said, his deep voice calm and steady, and I could see that something in his unflappable demeanor had reassured Octavia, who was watching intently but had ceased struggling against Raven to get out of her seat.  "I can't let you shoot an innocent woman."

 _"Innocent?"_ spat Indra.  "How can you _possibly_ use that word?  How can you stand there and defend her?"

“Because she’s like me,” he said simply. “She’s a half-clan girl. She's standing with one foot in the darkness and one foot in the light. But she’s trying. She wants to live in the light, Indra. She’s not your enemy. She never was.”

Indra shook her head.  "You know that's not true, Lincoln," she said.  "We both know who she really is."

A knife of white-hot panic shot through me at those words, and I stared at Abigail in bafflement.  She was shaking her head, a little sadly.

"No, you don't," she said.  "You don't know me at all.  You only know where I come from.  That isn't the same.  Lincoln understands that.  It isn't the same."

"Your clan is your clan, Abigail," she said.  "Their blood runs through your veins.  They're inside you.  All those deaths.  They're all inside you.  Their blood is inside you."

I couldn't stay silent any longer and rose out of my seat.  Lincoln shot me a warning glance, but I didn't care.  "What is this about, Indra?" I asked, and there was something in my voice that made her pay attention.  She kept the gun on Abigail but turned to look at me. 

"Ask her," she said.

Abigail remained stubbornly silent.

“Abigail,” I began, but I didn’t know how to continue.

“Tell him,” said Indra, “or I will.”

Abigail looked from Indra to Lincoln, and from Lincoln to me, then gave a bone-deep sigh.  I watched her whole body relax, as though some huge burden was lifted off her small shoulders.  And then she did something that was, under the circumstances, rather astonishing.  She turned her back and walked away from a startled Indra, pulled out a green bottle marked “#10” from behind the bar, and poured a dangerously generous amount of the brown liquid into two glasses.

“Careful, that stuff’s really –“ Monty began to protest, then trailed off.

“I think they’ll be fine,” said Raven under her breath.

“We have old scores to settle,” said Abby, returning to the door and holding out one of the glasses to Indra. “I get that. I’d rather do it this way than with a gun. I’d rather talk.”

Indra looked at her. They sized each other up for a long moment.

“I’m not afraid of your people,” said Indra in a low voice.

“I am," said Abigail frankly.  "They're ruthless and they'll stop at nothing to get what they want.  And we can end this.  We can put him away forever.  All those unnecessary deaths, all the Grounders you've lost, all the things he's done - we can stop it, Indra.  _We can stop it._ After all of this is over, if you still want to shoot me in the chest, go right ahead.  But for now, just for a few minutes - will you trust me?"

Indra looked her up and down with a narrow, appraising stare.

"You have more courage than I thought," she finally admitted grudgingly.  "The men of your family have none.  But you do."  And after a long, tense moment, she took the glass. The two women looked at each other, then drank.

They both knocked back the entire contents of the glass in one go.  I hadn’t had the pleasure of sampling Batch #10 myself, but it was clear the horrified-and-impressed looks on Monty and Jasper’s faces that Abigail and Indra had consumed far more than the recommended daily average. Impressively, though, neither woman even flinched.

“I could tell you that wasn’t the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen,” whispered Raven at my elbow, “but my Nana taught me never to lie on Sundays."

I was only half-listening, watching in astonishment as Indra disarmed her gun and set it down on the bar.

“We were in the middle of dinner,” said Abigail politely, for all the world as if she were hosting us all in her parlor, “will you have something to eat?”

“I’ve eaten,” said Indra stiffly.

“Suit yourself,” shrugged Abigail.  "But come sit.  Before Lieutenant Blake here absolutely loses his mind," she added, looking over at Bellamy who was barely able to restrain himself. 

"If someone doesn't tell me what the hell is going on _right goddamn now_ ," he finally exploded, “so help me God –“

"I will," she reassured him.  "I promise.  I will.  Lincoln, come sit back down.  It's all right.  Indra's not going to shoot me."

"Not right now," corrected Indra in a foreboding voice, but she followed Lincoln back to the table.

"It was the woman at the laundromat, wasn't it?" Abigail asked suddenly, as we all stared at her.  Indra nodded.  "She saw me get out of the taxi with Kane, and then she saw the blood on the dress and she put two and two together.  And then she telephoned you to let you know where I was.  And that there was a fox in the Grounder henhouse."

"Very good," Indra conceded.

"Except for one thing," said Abigail, leaning across the table as Indra sat down across from her.  " _I'm not the fox._   We're on the same side, Indra. I'm not the one you have to worry about. I'm just the fox's daughter."  She turned to Bellamy. "Lieutenant Blake," she said. “How much do you know about a man named Dante Wallace?”

He thought for a long moment, then shook his head.  The name meant nothing to him.  Or to Octavia, I could see.  It meant nothing to me either, though I was beginning to suspect I could fill a whole book with the things about Abigail Griffin that I didn't know.

It was clear, however, from the sudden scraping of chairs on wooden floors as Raven, Monty and Jasper tensed up and moved a little farther away from Abigail, that the name _did_ mean something to them.  And even though he did not react - did not seem surprised at all, appeared to have been waiting for this - it was obviously also loaded with some dark meaning for Lincoln.

"How the hell does a woman like _you_ know about Dante Wallace?" exclaimed Raven incredulously, and I felt the tension in the room begin to bubble and rise around me. 

"Who is Dante Wallace?" I asked, addressing everyone in the room but the equally perplexed Blakes.  Abigail was silent, staring down into her drink.  So it was Lincoln who finally answered.

"Dante Wallace is the patriarch of the Wallace Boys," he said, "and if you've never heard of them then they've done their job right.  They're behind half the violent crime in New York City.  And sworn enemies of the Grounders."

"They're vicious, and bloodthirsty, and they kill for sport," said Jasper, and Raven nodded. 

"Grounders stick to themselves," she explained.  "Grounders get in and get out.  The job's a success if nobody even knows you were there.  But the Wallace Boys . . ." She shuddered a little.  "They're nasty.  The Wallace Boys don't call a job well done until twenty innocent bystanders are lying dead on the ground."

"Anytime you find a Grounder murdered in a particularly creative way," Monty said, "sooner or later the trail leads back to someone on the payroll of Dante Wallace."

"How is it possible I've never heard of them?" exclaimed Bellamy incredulously, but Indra shrugged it off.

"Because he owns the police force too," she said, as though it were obvious.  "Half the men you work with are taking bribes from the Wallace Boys."

"They appear out of nowhere to wreak havoc," said Lincoln, "and then they disappear again.  They go so far back underground that the NYPD couldn't find them even if they tried.  Dante Wallace has been pulling the strings to run this town for forty years."

I turned to Abigail.

"And you know this monster _how_?" I said, my heart pounding.  I already knew what she was going to say, even before the words came out of her mouth.

She looked at me evenly.

“Because he’s my father.”


	13. Chapter 13

Abigail kept her promise to tell us the entire story.

This was the story she told.

* * *

Once upon a time in New York City, there lived a young man from a respectable organized crime family whose father died young and left the clan in his son's charge before the boy was even twenty-five.  Young Dante Wallace had grown up in a very different New York, where the Wallace Boys and the Grounders kept a genteel distance from each other.  The Grounders ran low-level, non-violent criminal operations, dabbling in counterfeiting and a little light blackmail, while the Wallace Boys moved through the upper echelons of society with politicians and socialites in their pockets.  The city was plenty big enough for the both of them.  That was the New York Dante Wallace's father had left him, but it was not the New York Dante Wallace wanted. 

So he built another one.

For forty years he quietly pulled strings and pushed buttons until he was the undisputed king of the New York underground.  So underground that nobody - except for other criminals - even knew he existed.  Raven had lost both her parents in a Wallace bank robbery - they hadn't done anything, they hadn't even been criminals, they were just a young couple waiting in line at the bank when bullets began to fly.  Jasper and Monty had run up against the Wallace Boys more than once themselves, and Jasper had lost a girl he loved in a botched Grounder/Wallace hostage negotiation.

And Lincoln?

Lincoln did not say anything - Lincoln contributed nothing to this part of the conversation - but something dark and fearsome and shadowy moved around inside his normally kind eyes, and I could tell that Octavia didn't know any more than I did what it was.  But something terrible had happened to Lincoln at the hands of the Wallace Boys.  She knew it, and I knew it.

Dante Wallace, as it happened, had two children.  The Wallace Boys were decidedly a patriarchy (unlike the more sensible Grounders, who assigned power to whoever was best fit to wield it and could hardly have done better than Indra), so the older girl was immediately irrelevant.  All Dante's attention and affections went to his son Cage.

But just as Dante had been a significant step more ambitious than his father, Cage took it yet further.  Cage was the one, we were told, who declared out-and-out war on the Grounders.

"In the old days," said Indra, "they didn't kill us just to kill us.  Only when necessary.  There was a balance.  You come after me, I come after you; you leave me alone, I leave you alone.  On both sides.  But Cage Wallace _likes_ to hurt people.  It gives him _pleasure._   And the Grounders became his target."

Dante Wallace had had grand ambitions for Cage, and Cage did not disappoint him, but his plan for his daughter was infinitely crueler and more subtle. 

Cage would be the man on the throne and the hand holding the sword.

Abigail, Dante decided, would be the money.

And so he tugged lightly on a few strings, causing a few puppets to jump to his bidding, until - in a scene out of some dark fairy tale - a childless multimillionaire whose money was entirely clean found himself in possession of an adopted daughter. 

Little Abigail grew up knowing bits and pieces about who her father was, and reached adulthood believing that this had been his one true selfless act of parental generosity - he had sent her away to be raised by good people, out of the Wallace clan's blood-soaked and violent world.

But she was just as much a part of the plan as her brother Cage.  She just didn't know it.

The key to all of this was Jacob Griffin.

Carson Griffin, long childless before Abigail came into his life, had settled the entirety of his estate onto a distant nephew named Jacob.  When he adopted Abigail, he rewrote his will, moving half of the share to her.  This was a perfectly amenable solution for everyone; Abigail and Jacob grew up as friends, there was no enmity between them, and fifty percent of all Carson Griffin's assets was more money than anyone could possibly need in a hundred lifetimes.  All was well.

And then, one day, the sweet sunny life of Abigail Wallace became a dark fairy tale once more, when the villain reemerged from the wings and stepped back onto center stage.

Carson Griffin had thought it inadvisable to leave Abigail in ignorance of where she'd come from, so he gave her the bare bones of the story about who her father was, the things he had done, and how she had been rescued from them by being sent away.  But she had been three years old when she was taken from the Wallace clan, and she did not remember Dante.  He was the frightening creature under her bed, lurking in her childhood nightmares, but he wasn't _real_ to her.  So she was caught entirely unprepared when on her twenty-first birthday that aristocratic, well-dressed man with impeccable graying hair and a kindly smile sat down next to her on that park bench, and told her in the gentlest of voices that he was her father, that she belonged to the Wallace clan, that the freedom she believed she had been granted was merely a temporary illusion, that the time had finally arrived for her to fulfill the mission for which he had always intended her.  He performed the script perfectly, slipping right into her childhood nightmares and making them real, and as they sat side-by-side on that park bench, watching families with children and women walking dogs on leashes pass them by on the pathways, he described in emotionless and harrowing detail just exactly what he would do to everyone Abigail cared about if she did not do the thing he asked of her:

If she did not gain complete financial control of Griffin Railways and all their holdings. If she did not claim both halves of the estate by marrying Jacob Griffin, and then having him killed.

Abigail was the product of Carson Griffin's parenting in every significant way - her grit, her integrity, her passionate sense of justice, her heart - except for one: she had just enough Dante Wallace inside her to know _exactly_ what he expected she would do.

So she did it.  She put on a frightened face.  She listened carefully.  She nodded at the correct moments and shook her head at the correct moments and promised to do what he asked of her.  Satisfied, he patted her head, called her a good girl, and disappeared into the crowds strolling through Central Park.  She did not see him again.

But there was one piece that he had missed.  Abigail could read Wallace, but Wallace failed to read Abigail.

It would never have occurred to a man like that - a man to whom trust was a weakness, a man who preyed on people with deception and blackmail and fear - that Abigail would walk straight home, sit Carson and Jacob down at the kitchen table, and tell them exactly what had happened.

No.  He would not have seen that coming.  Which was the only hope any of them had to survive.

Abigail and Jacob were friends, but they were not in love with each other.  They never had been and never would be.  But that afternoon, on Abigail's twenty-first birthday, when she returned home from what had started as a sunny walk in the park and ended as a nightmare, they agreed with Carson Griffin that the only thing to do was for the two of them to get married. So they did. It was not, by any stretch, a conventional marriage.  Jacob worked mostly out of the Chicago branch of the company, and Abigail had an apartment in New York.  They were fond of each other, they appeared in public together, they kept up the facade, and they cobbled together what happiness they could.

Carson Griffin was one of the handful of people on earth who was powerful and high-profile enough that Wallace would not dare make an attack on his life.  Abigail had kept up the first part of her bargain and married her half of Griffin's fortune to the other half, and Wallace was satisfied.  He would bide his time until Carson died, and then Jacob Griffin would quietly be made to disappear, after which everything would go to Abigail.  And, subsequently, to the Wallace clan - who would now control the single largest railway company in the United States.

Then one day Jacob arrived by surprise at Abigail's apartment.  He had booked a hotel in the city on business and had been told upon arrival that the room would not be ready until the next day.  On his way to search for another hotel he had dropped in to say hello to Abigail, drop off some papers for her to sign regarding the company's latest acquisition, and have a drink.  Then one drink turned into several, and afternoon turned into evening, and suddenly Abigail's smile salved the thousand stinging irritations of Jacob's particularly frustrating day and made him feel more pleasant than he had felt in a long time. Abigail, meanwhile, spent so much of her life surrounded by chattering society wives that she had almost forgotten what it was like to have a real conversation with one of the two people on earth who truly knew her.  It suddenly seemed silly to send Jacob back out in the cold to hunt for a hotel just for one night when his wife had an empty guest room.  Evening turned into night, and some heady combination of moonlight and whiskey and conversation flipped a switch inside them both.

They did not, in the end, require the use of the guest room.

Nine months later, Clarke Griffin was born, and it changed everything.

One night of passion did not make Mr. and Mrs. Griffin any more of a conventional couple than they had ever been before, it seemed.  Abigail drew a discreet veil over the details of her marital bed, but from the way she spoke it was clear that their amiable separation continued as before except that now they occasionally slept together.  The biggest transformation was Clarke, whom neither of them had planned for but both of them adored.

Once that small, rosy-pink, golden-haired creature came into the world, both her grandfathers were forced to set new plans in motion. Carson Griffin, who doted on Clarke, saw an opening to protect Jacob and Abigail from fulfilling the second half of Dante Wallace's plan.  If he changed his will to bypass the two of them, and left everything in trust for Clarke, then Abigail would not be asked to kill her own husband to claim his fortune.  It would be locked away, out of her hands, and there would be nothing Wallace could do about it.  Abigail received this suggestion with tremendous relief.  Surely, once there was nothing left she could give her father, he would either kill her or go away.  Either way, it would be over.

Dante Wallace had not accounted for a grandchild.  He had expected the Griffin estate to fall into the hands of the daughter he believed he could control - not to a child, and a stranger.  A child who would not inherit until she was twenty-one.  The funds were locked away until then, and nobody could access them. "Just kill the kid," suggested Cage, knowing it would revert all the funds back to her parents.  But Dante, who needed Abigail docile, and knew how unlikely that would be if anything happened to the child, dismissed this idea as idiotic.  No.  They had waited this long.  They would wait until Clarke turned twenty-one, and then they would strike.

Clarke knew none of this. 

She had no idea she was the heiress to one of the largest fortunes in the world.  She had no idea Dante Wallace existed.  She was carefree and happy and beautiful and rich, and her parents loved her.  She might have wished she saw more of her father - whose business kept him in Chicago most of the time - and she grieved heartily for her kindly grandfather, who passed away peacefully when she was ten.  But other than that, her life was close to perfect.

But now she was missing.

And her father had been shot.

And her mother was the subject of a citywide manhunt in connection with both their deaths.

Abigail had no proof that the Wallace clan had set in motion a plan to take over the Griffin fortunes by killing Jacob and abducting Clarke, but she _felt_ it, down to her bones.  The city was full of places to shoot a man and leave his body, but someone had chosen to do it in the middle of Abigail Griffin's white living room.  That was a Cage Wallace flourish, she thought.  That was her brother's theatrical flair.  And now she had Jacob Griffin's blood on her hands, and they were coming for her next.  Dante Wallace only needed one of them, and could not afford to let the other live. And he knew she would refuse to help him if anything happened to Clarke - which made her the expendable one.  Her father was one of the most powerful men in New York and he would not stop coming for her until he got what he wanted, and that the police - half of whom would never believe her and the other half of whom were on her father's payroll - would not help her.

She had no one.  She had only us.

We were the only thing standing between the Griffin women and the Wallace Boys.

* * *

The room was silent for a long time after Abigail finished her story.  We all looked from one to the other, brains spinning furiously. 

This was the missing piece of the puzzle, the "why" that had never been clear, the arrow pointing directly at Abigail Griffin and answering the question I had been unable to answer.  This was the reason these events had been set in motion.  We still didn't know where the girls were - or why the other six were important, unless they were mere camouflage for Clarke - but I could see from the look on everyone's faces that we had agreed, collectively, that Abigail's instincts were right.

Dante Wallace had those kids. 

_Dante Wallace had taken Clarke Griffin._

Surprisingly, the one who first broke the silence and spoke up was Indra.

"If the Wallace Boys have those missing children," she said, "then finding them could lead you straight to Dante."

Abigail nodded.  "You'll never get another chance like this, Indra," she said.  "Right now the best weapon we have is that _Wallace doesn't know that we know._ If he has cops in his pocket, all they'll know is that Lieutenant Blake was benched for interfering.  They won't know he has the files.  They won't know we've found the other girls.  This could be the closest anyone's gotten in forty years to getting the drop on Dante Wallace."  The corners of her lip curled up in a half-smile.  "Wouldn't it be a shame to miss out on the fun?"

Indra looked back at her for a long, long moment.

Then she smiled back.


	14. Chapter 14

It was well after midnight by the time we bid farewell to Indra. Considering the circumstances upon which she had entered the room, the fact that she departed with handshakes all around and a promise to rally the Grounders for whatever help we needed felt like nothing short of a miracle.  She left with Octavia and Lincoln in tow; having gotten wind of the fact that the entire conclave was sequestered inside the speakeasy, she offered the guest room at her place - which Lincoln observed was perhaps the most secure apartment in all of New York City.  Jasper and Monty, who lived upstairs from the speakeasy, had turned over their beds to Bellamy and Raven, and they themselves took the upstairs sofas.  Meanwhile, back downstairs, they had made up a bed for Abigail on the sofa in the war room.  I had a blanket and a pillow for myself near the main entrance of the bar, so I could hear immediately if anyone made it past the Grounder laundromat and up the stairs, but I didn't expect to sleep much.  I had too much thinking to do.

I changed into my pajamas in the washroom by the kitchen, and briefly stopped into the war room to check on Abigail, who I assumed was already sleeping.

She wasn't.

She was sitting up on the sofa, knees drawn up and arms circled around them, staring at Bellamy's evidence wall.

I could have said a brief goodnight to her, then closed the door and left.

I could have walked past her undetected and gone straight to my bed.

I could have.

Maybe I should have.

But it's like I said before - clocks only tick forward.  We never know what's going to happen next when we make our choices.  And we don't always know why we make the ones we make.  Not until later, when we look back and the pattern becomes clear.

So instead of walking past Abigail and going straight to bed, I walked over and sat down beside her.

We looked at the evidence wall together in silence for a long moment before she spoke.

"I keep thinking there's a pattern in front of me," she said in frustration.  "That there's something there, and I should know what it is, but I'm missing it."

"We all feel that way," I said to her. 

"It all just looks like noise to me," she said.  "No connections.  Port cities and abduction by ship makes sense.  It's clean.  It's untrackable.  And Clarke - if it's Wallace behind this, then Clarke makes sense too.  But why these other girls?"  She shook her head.  "Rich parents but no ransom notes.  Why?  Why would you do that?  I can't understand it."

"We'll get there," I said.  "We have a whole Grounder army now, don't forget."

She was silent for a long time.

"I should have told you," she said finally.  "About my father.  I should have told you that at the very beginning."

"Yes," I said frankly.  "You should have."

"I was afraid," she said in a low voice, still not looking at me, still drawn into a tiny ball in the corner of the sofa, like a small child.  "He told me that day on the park bench that if I ever crossed him, he would see to it that everyone I ever loved for the rest of my life would suffer for it.  That's why there was only ever Jacob.  I couldn't  . . . I was so afraid that if I ever -"  She stopped. 

"Abigail," I said in a low voice.  She couldn't look at me.

"Everyone I've ever cared about is gone," she said, so quietly I could hardly make out the words, and I felt my heart turn over inside my chest at the dull ache of sadness that echoed through her lonely voice.  "It's safer not to care about anyone.  I've worked so hard, Marcus, trying to keep everyone safe.  Trying not to give my father a reason to come back into my life and take away someone else.  Trying not to have a heart at all, so he would never be able to break it."  She looked at me then, for the first time, really looked at me, and there were tears glittering in her eyes.  "When we were at your apartment," she said.  "You were so gentle, you were so kind, you told me you would take me away to a place where I would be safe."  I nodded.  "You wanted to protect me," she said.

"Yes," I said.  "Yes, I did."

"Even though in that moment, you thought I had killed my husband."

"I believed you," I insisted.  "When you told me what happened, I believed you."

She shook her head.  "No," she said, "this was _before_.  Before I told you what happened.  Before you figured out I didn't know about the carpet, that I hadn't checked out of the hotel.  The first thing you did was drop your bag in the sink and run to my side."

"Abigail, I -"

"You thought I had killed a man," she said, wonder in her voice, "and instead of calling the police you put your arms around me." 

"I didn't want you to get hurt," I said.  "I wanted to keep you safe."

She laughed at that a little, a sad mirthless laugh, and I watched as the tears in her eyes began to spill over.  "God damn you, Marcus Kane," she said softly, but there was no anger in her words, only deep sorrow.  "You stupid man.  I _was_ safe.  My heart was safe.  I sat there for hours and hours on the floor of your bedroom and I thought to myself, 'This is it.  He promised he would do his worst, and he has.'  And do you know what I felt?  _Relief._ Because for the first time in my life, there was nothing left for Dante Wallace to take away."  She turned and looked at me, eyes shining with tears, a rueful smile on her face.  "And then _you_ walk in," she said with a sad laugh, "and you kneel down next to me and you watch me turn Lady Macbeth right before your eyes, and you tell me you don't care that I've just murdered someone because you're going to make everything all right."  She turned and looked at me.  "How on _earth_ ," she said, "was I supposed to keep my heart safe after that?"

There was a look on her face - a bewitching combination of raw longing, profound sadness, a hint of faint amusement at the irony of her own plight, and naked invitation - that punched a hole right through the wall I'd been carefully building between us.

There was absolutely no way for me not to kiss her, at that point, so that’s what I did.

The moment my mouth touched hers, something snapped inside her, just like it had before when I had kissed her back into sanity on the floor of my apartment. She responded with her entire body. Only this time there was no blood, no madness, no fear. This time she was just a woman in white pajamas whose skin still smelled like soap and whose damp hair fluttered loose from its braid around her face. This time she was simply Abigail, and she kissed me back with such force that I felt some strange, powerful emotion running from her to me like an electrical current. I felt myself flush with pleasure – and a little surprise – that her mouth and hands seemed to be saying that she wanted me as much as I wanted her. I hadn’t thought there was any way that was possible.

I hadn’t thought it was possible for anyone in this world to want anything as much as I wanted to get Abigail Griffin out of those white pajamas and into my arms.

I kissed my way down her throat, tasting her clean skin, devouring her with my mouth and tongue, and she made a soft kind of murmuring sound that broke me open inside. I kissed lower and lower, chasing that sound, hoping to draw it out of her again, and I struck gold by unbuttoning the crisp white cotton of Monty’s pajamas and moving my mouth to the valley between the creamy swell of her breasts. She liked that. She made the sound again, louder this time, and I laughed a little, pressing my mouth to hers.

“I don’t want to stop,” I whispered as I pulled my lips away, “but there are four nosy idiots sleeping upstairs and two more nosy idiots showing back up here in the morning, and these walls are thin.”

“Well, somebody’s awfully sure of himself,” she said with a wide grin, and I laughed, pressing a kiss onto her shoulder. “You seem pretty confident that it’s about to get loud in here.”

“Isn’t it?” I said, arching an eyebrow at her.

“I can control myself,” she said. “You’re the one I’m worried about.”

I didn’t answer, but swiftly moved my mouth lower to ensnare one of her breasts. Her whole body convulsed at that, and she gave a low – but not low enough – cry of pleasure that set my whole body on fire. It wasn’t quite loud enough to reach upstairs to the boys’ apartment, but it sure as hell would have alerted anyone on this floor.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “you were saying?”

“Well, that time I couldn’t help it,” she said. “You surprised me.”

“It’s up to you,” I said, trailing a fingertip along her collarbone to lazily circle first one nipple, then the other. She bit her lip to keep from crying out. “You tell me what you want, Abigail.”

“You know what I want,” she said, her breath coming harsh and fast. “You knew what I wanted the first moment I saw you.”

I pulled her into my arms then, and looked at her seriously. She saw my expression change and the smile died away from her face.

“A lot has changed since the first moment I saw you,” I said. “A lot of things have happened.” I struggled, helplessly, trying to put it into words. “If you,” I began. “If I’m – if this is –“

“Marcus,” she said softly.

“What you’ve been through tonight,” I said, floundering a little. “I don’t want you to think – if I’m taking advantage –“

“Stop,” she said. “Stop, and listen to me.” She placed a hand over my mouth. “Yes,” she agreed. “Yes. I want to forget about Jacob. Just for a little while. I want to forget about all of it. I want to be somewhere else. If that were all, I would tell you we ought to stop. But that’s not what this is,” she went on, her voice low and urgent. “This thing between us. We both know that’s not what this is.”

She pulled the white pajama top off and threw it onto the floor, and then began unbuttoning mine. She pressed warm little kisses all over my chest, and I began to feel almost feverish – hot and then cold, shaky and a little dizzy all over. I shrugged my arms out of the sleeves and pulled it all the way off, but I was too overeager and one of my arms got tangled. I flapped helplessly to get out of it, and Abigail burst out laughing.

“This,” she said, as she gently helped me pull the crisp cotton off me. “This is what I want. This is what I need. You wanted to rescue me, Marcus, and you did. I just need to forget for a little while. If I lie here alone, I’ll go back to that apartment. If I lie here with you,” she breathed into my ear as she slid her hands all over my chest, “I’ll be here with you.”

“Abigail, I –“

But I never finished that sentence. She pulled away from me, stood up, and gently pulled the white cotton waistband of the pajamas down over her hips until the fabric pooled on the floor below her like a snowdrift and she stepped free of them, completely naked.

I swallowed hard.

She was perfect. She stood there for a minute and let me just look at her. Her skin was creamy, her nipples firm and rose-colored, the hair between her thighs dark and soft, and I wanted her more than I’d ever wanted another woman in my life. Then she bent low over me – allowing me a tantalizingly close view of her soft breasts – and reached down to tug at the waistband of my pajamas.

“You’re still sure?” I whispered. She nodded, as the last barrier of fabric between us came away. Then she sat me back on the couch, straddled me with her legs, and guided me inside her.

The shock of her wetness took me by surprise. I had had no idea how ready she was, but I slipped into her so easily and smoothly that we both let out a gasp. I leaned against the back of the sofa and she leaned forward to meet me there, her mouth closing in on mine as my arms went around her waist and she began to rock, slowly at first, against me.

I was already close to the edge – I wasn’t sure it was going to take me long – but I wanted to arrive alongside her. Her mouth moved frantically against mine, and I swallowed every cry and moan, muffling them with my lips and tongue. It was almost too much pleasure, it was everything I wanted, but it wasn’t just the things she did to my body. It was _her._ It was the way she wanted me, too, the way she looked at me. She was happy.

_I made her happy._

I rose and fell inside her as her hips took me in deeper and deeper, and I reveled in the sparkle of delight in her eyes when I slipped one hand from her waist down to the soft damp hair and began to stroke her there.

 _“Oh,”_ she murmured in astonishment, her eyes growing wide and dark.

“Shhh,” I said with a wicked little grin as she pitched forward, bracing herself with both hands against the back of the couch, thrusting wildly against me. I caught one breast in my mouth, and continued to stroke her.

"I don't know if I can be quiet - _oh!_ \- if you're going to - if you're going to keep doing that," she gasped.

"Should I stop?"

"Not if you know what's good for you," she said, hips moving faster and faster, and I was getting close, we were both getting close, I could feel my blood begin to race and my heart begin to pound, it felt so good to be inside her, it felt so good to see her aglow and ecstatic and so _alive_.  I let my hand move a little faster, and she let out another dangerously loud moan of pleasure.

"You kids keep it down in there!" I whispered with a grin, and she laughed.

"You're not making this easy on me," she gasped.

"If you can't keep quiet," I said, "then you'd better kiss me."

She obliged, happily, leaning in close as her damp braid fell over her shoulder and brushed my throat.  Her mouth was hot and frantic on mine, and I could feel her begin to come, feel a great soul-shattering cry begin to surge out of her, and so I kissed her hard, kissed her until neither of us could breathe, and we came like that, together.  I felt myself soar and soar and soar and then burst inside her, and felt her quiver and tremble in my arms as I descended.  She pulled her mouth away from mine, sweating, breathless, panting, and leaned her forehead against mine with her eyes closed while I held her tightly for a long, long time.

We sat like that for awhile, just breathing each other in, silent and still.  I could feel her heartbeat thumping in harmony with my own, and I knew that I had crossed a line I couldn't un-cross.  I knew this woman still had grief and secrets, I knew there were still corners of her heart that might be closed to me, and I knew we were all about to walk headfirst into danger. 

But I also knew that I was in love with her, that she was the bravest person I'd ever met, and that I wouldn't take any of it back.

After awhile we roused ourselves enough to put our pajamas back on, whispering and giggling like misbehaving children, trying to be quiet for the grownups upstairs.  But when I got up to leave her to go back out to my cold bed on the hall floor, she took my hand and pulled me back to her.  And so we pulled the cushions off the sofa and made a makeshift bed on the floor, and we slept that night tangled in each other's arms.

* * *

The next morning we were very, very careful to act normal, to not give anything away.  Lincoln and Octavia rejoined us shortly after breakfast as our investigation - now with an avalanche of new leads, and Indra working the telephones from her bar - resumed again. 

"You're looking awfully fresh-faced," said Raven to Abigail, "for someone who pounded a highball's worth of Batch #10 last night.  I'm surprised you're on your feet, instead of groaning on the sofa with a beast of a hangover."

Abigail was not given the chance to answer, as Monty inhaled sharply from behind me and I saw Jasper, behind the bar making a fresh pot of coffee, stiffen and turn slowly around to glower at Raven.

"I beg your pardon," he said in a voice that would freeze molten lava.  “Our product _never_ causes hangovers.”

“We are _scientists_ ,” said Monty indignantly. “This is a _precise science_."

"I didn't mean to hurt your feelings," said Raven with a raised eyebrow.  Monty was not mollified.

"We’re not just throwing rotten fruit in a jar and hoping to God it turns alcoholic, you know," he sniffed.  "We take pride in our work."

"You've done an excellent job," said Abigail soothingly.  "I feel perfectly fine.  It might have been a glass of water."

Jasper harrumphed a little and busied himself with the coffee.  Monty shot Raven one more death glare, which led her to apologize again.  I was the only one in the room who knew Raven well enough to recognize that that terse little smile was her way of forcing herself not to burst out laughing. Indeed, Jasper and Monty’s righteous indignation on behalf of this slight on their moonshine did something to the mood in the whole room; it was as though the bubble of tension that had entered the bar last night with Abigail's bloodstained dress and Indra's loaded gun had dissolved entirely in the morning light.

We were _us_ again.

We were a team.

And we had work to do.

Raven ducked out on an errand while Monty and Jasper - back at work in the daily grind of manufacturing and selling illegal spirits - popped in and out throughout the morning. Abigail and I sat down with Lincoln and the Blakes to get to work.  There were a great number of things we had been too distracted, after yesterday's events, to discuss as deeply as we should have.  I'd forgotten, for example, to ask Bellamy about his meeting with Detective Murphy yesterday at Indra's Bar.  He had learned very little - which, knowing what we now knew, was significant in itself.

"The most important thing," he said, "is that Murphy went downstairs to talk to Fox and she said nobody had come sniffing around asking questions.  That means we can be fairly sure none of Wallace's pet cops know that anyone has connected those other girls to Clarke Griffin, or to each other."

"What about the investigation itself?" I asked.  "About Clarke's disappearance."  Bellamy shook his head.

"Dead in the water," he said.  "If anyone's pursuing it - if Jaha and his mysterious guy on the phone are still trying to build a case against Mrs. Griffin, Murphy couldn't find out who else knew about it.  Nobody appears to have been assigned to the case.  He thinks they're just going to stick it in a cold case file and quietly forget about it."

"That's good," observed Octavia.  "Less interference.  Fewer uniforms for the rest of us to avoid."

"True," I agreed cautiously, "but it also means no official backup when we need it.  It means this is all on us now."

"And the Grounders," she corrected.

"That's right," I said.  "And the Grounders."

The Grounders had, in fact, already come through for us that morning.  Lincoln's friend Nyko, who had met yesterday with Octavia to talk in amusingly hypothetical terms about _possible, theoretical_ logistical details for import and export of illegal goods by sea, had stopped by that morning with a map of maritime shipping routes around the United States, and some rough mathematical calculations of distance and time.

We spread the map out on one of the bar tables and clustered around it to look, as Lincoln traced the lines from port to port to show us Nyko’s calculations.

“It’s just _barely_ possible,” he finally said. “A freight barge couldn’t do it in that time, but a light, fast-moving cargo ship could. Or a sailboat. If they came this way” – he pointed – “through the Panama Canal, instead of sailing all the way around the Cape of Good Hope. You could just barely do it.”

“So it’s possible,” said Abigail. “It could be the same ship.”

“It could,” said Octavia. “That’s what Nyko said. He said he had no idea _why_ someone would take that route – unless there was a reason they had to be in a particular place on a particular day – but yes, it could be done.”

“But that doesn’t bring us any closer to figuring out where it went after it picked up Clarke,” said Abigail. “We still don’t know where they are. That was two weeks ago. They could be halfway to China by now.”

“They _could_ be,” said a voice from the doorway, as we turned to Raven bounce back into the room wearing her most irresistible cheeky grin. “But they’re not.”

There was a hint of dramatic pronouncement in her voice, like a magician about to perform a particularly delightful trick and would like the children to please give her their full attention. And, because it was Raven, we did.

"In all the chaos last night, I completely forgot that I had something to tell you," she said.  " I happened to have a _very_ productive day yesterday, and I'm a little disappointed that none of you ever thought to ask me if I found any abandoned cars by the docks like you asked me to.”

“All right, Raven,” sighed Octavia. “Did you find any abandoned cars down by the docks?”

“No.”

Bellamy buried his face in his hands.

“Please don’t make us guess,” he muttered, “I’m begging you.”

“I found something better than a car by the docks,” she said. “I found a car at the _Plaza_.”

That did get our attention.

I sat up straight and looked at her.

“All right,” I said. “You’ve got us. What did you find?”

“A 1921 Mercer Series 5 Raceabout,” she said, swooning a little. “Cherry red. It’s a thing of beauty. I wanted to kiss it. 4-cylinder engine, 70 horsepower –“

“And I hope the two of you will be very happy together,” I said, “I’ve been rooting for you two crazy kids, but before you start planning your honeymoon can you at least tell us where you found it?”

“There’s an alley behind the hotel,” she said. “It’s blocked off with trash barrels so you can’t turn into it when you drive down the street. You’d slip right past it if you weren’t looking.”

“But you were looking.”

“Naturally.  And it turns out,” she said, “that on the other side of that heap of trash barrels is one damned expensive car. And I found two very, very interesting things on the floor of the passenger seat.”

“Did you now,” I said.

“Yes, I did.”

“Are you going to tell us what they were?”

“Is everyone paying attention?” she said.

“Raven, for the love of God,” groaned Bellamy.

“Just spit it out,” said Lincoln. “You’re making everyone crazy.”

“Fine,” she said, “Here it is. Thing one,” she said, pulling a small glittering object out of her pocket and setting it on top of the map (Helena, Montana, I observed irrelevantly). “Inventory. One earring. Pink diamond. Made by Tiffany’s. Would look quite fetching, I suspect, with a rose-colored Lanvin beaded evening frock straight off the Paris runway.”

"That's Clarke's," said Abigail, seizing it off the table and examining it.  "Oh my God, this is Clarke's earring.  Clarke was in that car."

"Do you remember seeing that car around the hotel anywhere?" Bellamy asked her.  She shook her head. 

“What’s the second thing?” I asked Raven, and she grinned at me.

“This one’s even better,” she said, and pulled out a piece of paper, folded over several times, and handed it to me.

I unfolded it.

I read it.

I looked up at Raven.

I read it again.

“Not too shabby, huh, boss?” she said impishly, and her delight was infectious.

“Raven Reyes,” I said, not looking up from the paper, “if you were ten years older I’d kiss you right on the mouth.”

“Well, I've always been old for my age.”

“You’re an angel,” I went on. “You’re a saint. You’re a gift from the gods.”

“This is good, I like this. Keep going. Tell me more things about me.”

“You’re _impossible,_ both of you,” snapped Octavia. “Can you at least dial back the raptures until the rest of us have read it?”

Wordlessly, I placed the paper in her hands, and Bellamy leaned in to read it over her shoulder.

“It’s a want ad,” said Octavia.

Raven nodded. “It appears an anonymous gentleman with an unnamed post office box is looking to recruit some hired muscle for a one-night protection job this Thursday.”

“Doing what?” asked Jasper as he entered carrying boxes and set them down to come peer over our shoulder.

“Meeting the _S.S. Mount Weather_ when it docks at 58 th Street Pier,” I said.  “Apparently it’s carrying ‘Undisclosed Cargo.’”

“Last port of call?” asked Jasper, craning his neck to see.

“San Francisco,” I said.  "Set sail June 2nd."

"With Maya Vie on board," he said, eyes wide.  I nodded.

"And five others, I'll bet.  Raven, I owe you a whole bathtub full of drinks for this."

"A bathtub with you in it?" she inquired, and Abigail laughed.

"Don't make the boys blush," I said warningly.  “Bellamy, I’ve got a job for you, but Octavia’s not going to like it.”

“You want me to answer the ad,” he said. I nodded.

“You’re right,” said Octavia. “I don’t like it. Because it’s _idiotic_.”

“No,” I said. “It’s our only lead. I want to know who in this city needs twelve armed goons to protect the goods from a cargo ship.  I want to know if Dante Wallace has those girls locked up inside the _Mount Weather_."

"It could just be Grounders," said Abigail.  "Or anyone else bringing liquor in."

“If it was Grounders, Lincoln would know,” I said, looking at him for confirmation. He nodded.

“Grounders have their own people for this,” he said. “We don’t hire strangers. Kane is right. This is different.”

“Flash team,” said Raven, and he nodded at her.

“What’s a flash team?” asked Abby, puzzled.

“Temporary crew,” explained Raven. “For a one-time job. Cash payments. All strangers.  One night.  None of the guys will know each other.  Probably never be told who they're working for, or what's in those cargo crates either.  Flash team means somebody who doesn't want to be traced.  The Grounders don't work like that.  They _want_ you to know it's a Grounder import ship, so you'll stay the hell away."

"Do the Wallace Boys use flash teams?" Bellamy asked, and Lincoln nodded.

"They've been known to," he said.  "Not regularly, but when the job is big enough.  Flash teams are expensive; it costs a lot to keep a stranger quiet who has no loyalty to you.  The money is their only commitment, so it has to be a big payout."

“Raven, I need you to go back to the Plaza to get that car,” I said. “We need to see if there’s a way to figure out who it belongs to.  And hopefully trace it back to someone connected with Wallace.”

“Well, I _could_ do that,” she said, “but instead of going _all the way_ back uptown to the Plaza, wouldn't it be easier if I just went downstairs and walked around back -"

"No, no, no."

" . . . to the little alley behind the laundromat where that old abandoned garage entrance is, that nobody ever uses?"

“Raven, you _stole the car?”_

“I _told_ you,” said Jasper. “I told you this was what he’d say.”

I didn’t _steal_ it,” she retorted, “I’m _borrowing_ it. I’ll put it back when I’m done.”

“It would be really great,” said Bellamy wearily, “if we could keep the number of extra crimes we commit while we’re investigating this one to a minimum.”

“I’m really just at the one so far,” said Raven. “That’s not too bad, for me.”

“Unfortunately, she’s right,” said Lincoln dryly, and Abigail laughed.

"Is this how you solve all your cases?" she said, raising an eyebrow at me, but I was delighted to see that she appeared - for the first time since I had met her - to be heartily enjoying herself.

"Something like that," I said.  "All right, everyone, homework assignments.  Raven, car. Go over it with a fine-toothed comb. Lincoln, get Nyko on the phone and see what you can find out about the _Mount Weather._ I want to know its route, and what kind of freight it usually carries, and any ties it might have to the Wallace family.”

“And if it has a cargo hold big enough to keep seven prisoners alive for anywhere between two weeks and six months,” added Abigail, and I grinned.  She was a natural.

“Exactly," I agreed.  "Octavia, you’re on investigative duty. Let’s try to track down the owner of this P.O. box to figure out who placed this ad. And set one up for Bell, while you’re at it; we can’t have his reply being traced back here, or to Indra’s. Bellamy, you’re going to answer that want ad. You’re going to need a cover story. And you’re going to need to try not to act like a cop.”

“And try not to get killed,” said Octavia curtly. Bellamy ruffled her hair, and she wrinkled her nose at him.

“Well, this sounds like an excellent plan with no flaws,” piped in Jasper cheerfully from behind the bar. “Sending a cop undercover to infiltrate a gang of kidnappers pulling into dock with six princesses tied up in the cargo hold? What could possibly go wrong?"

"Wait a minute," Octavia exclaimed suddenly.  "June 25th."

We all turned to stare at her in puzzlement. 

“What are you talking about?” asked Bellamy.

“Clarke disappeared on June 25th,” she said. “She’s been missing for two weeks.”

“Right.”

_“But the ship hasn’t landed yet.”_

I froze.

She was right. It was right there in front of us.  It was so clear.

We had been so thrilled to find a new lead that we had missed the most obvious thing about it.

“Kane’s got his Thinking Face on,” said Raven. “What’s happening?”

“The Mount Weather's not _here_ yet, Raven,” said Bellamy. “It won’t dock for four more days."

I nodded.  "Yet another arrow pointing to Dante Wallace," I said.  "Whoever kidnapped those girls is _here._ Because Clarke Griffin was never on board that ship.  Clarke Griffin never left New York City.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NOTE: this chapter switches to Bellamy's point of view (in case you're like "why is Kane talking about himself in the third person")

**BELLAMY BLAKE**

**CASE REPORT: CLARKE GRIFFIN**

 

 I’m not good with words and stuff, like Kane is.

To be honest, I’m not sure why he asked me to do this. I told him everything already. But he said something about how writing it down might help me remember details I’d forgotten, maybe things that didn’t seem to matter at the time but could turn out to be really important later. He said to start from the day after they pulled Jacob Griffin out of the river.

The day after Kane slept with Mrs. Griffin, and thought the rest of us didn’t know.

(Look. He told me to write down everything, so I’m writing down everything. He can throw this page away later if he wants to. But that’s the truth. That’s what happened.)

I didn’t get a lot of sleep that night, which was mostly Raven’s fault. Monty and Jasper were nice enough to take the couches in their living room, upstairs from the bar, and they let me and Raven have their beds. Both those guys are a lot shorter than I am, so I wasn’t looking forward to much of a good night’s rest anyway, but at least I was _trying._ Raven wasn’t even making an effort.

“I wonder where she is,” she whispered. She was laying in bed staring up at the ceiling, and I could tell she wasn’t even the littlest bit tired.

“Go to sleep, Raven.”

“If she’s not on the ship with the other girls, and she was taken somewhere in a car . . . That roadster is fast but it’s not built for long distances. And I don’t know why, but I have this feeling that whatever’s gonna happen on Thursday, Wallace wants all the girls together. So Clarke’s probably going to be taken to meet the ship.”

“Can we do this in the morning?”

“I’ll forget in the morning. So they come to get her at the Plaza – no, not _at_ the Plaza, but _near_ the Plaza, somewhere less conspicuous . . . I better call the concierge in the morning and see if he recognizes that car –“

I gave up.

“You keep talking,” I said, “I’m going to sleep.”

I rolled over and squashed the pillow over my head to drown her out. She kept talking, mostly to herself, in a voice that was quiet enough not to wake up Jasper and Monty but too loud for me to ignore. I was exhausted, though – all of us were, except _this_ chatterbox – so eventually the endless flow of words sort of faded and became kind of soothing. I couldn’t quite tune her out, but I let the talking kind of lull me to sleep.

I don’t know how long I made it before the next interruption, but it felt like only a few minutes. I knew I had successfully managed – against the odds – to fall asleep with Raven still talking, because when I heard her hiss my name again I woke up with a start, feeling my heart clench in panic.

I don’t want to make too much of a thing about – well. Octavia and I, we’ve been through some stuff. Not exactly the happiest childhood. Kane explained all that, there’s no reason to hash it all out again here. I just mean to say, it leaves weird scars on your brain. You react strangely to stuff. Like when Mrs. Griffin showed up last night with blood on her dress and Octavia had to go help her clean it off. I couldn’t watch that part. I started to feel a little sick. And hearing someone whisper your name in the middle of the night, in that urgent, pay-attention voice? Well, if you’re the kind of person with a dangerous mom and a little sister who’s your responsibility, that snaps you right out of bed.

I sat bolt upright, in a panic, and turned to Raven to see what the emergency was.

She was crouched on the floor in the middle of our two beds, ears pressed towards the floor.

“What?” I said urgently. “What’s wrong?”

“Listen to this,” she said excitedly.

“What am I listening to?” I started to say, and then I heard a sound from the room right below us – and then I heard a different sound – and I realized _exactly_ what I was listening to.

“You woke me up for _this_?”

“Get over here,” she said, “Kane and Mrs. Griffin are –“

“Yeah,” I said. “I can hear them. You woke me up for _this_?”

“Come on, Bell, come listen.”

“I was _sleeping_ ,” I said, “and also, _no_.” I flopped back on the bed and put my pillow back over my face.

“You’re no fun,” she protested.

I pressed my eyes shut and tried to ignore it.

It was different for Raven, who didn’t grow up sitting in a hallway and listening to her mom with a revolving door of awful guys coming in and out of her room all the time. Raven wasn’t Aurora Blake’s kid. She’d always had a little thing for Kane, and I guess there was a part of me that found it kind of amusing how openly she was enjoying herself, listening through the floorboards and spying on them. Me, I was just trying to un-hear Mrs. Griffin’s soft, breathy little sounds and their whispered voices that now I suddenly couldn’t tune out. It felt wrong to be listening. It was _Kane._ I guess I don’t really know what having a dad is supposed to be like, since Octavia and I didn’t get one, but Kane is whatever the closest thing is to that, and for God’s sake, the man deserved some privacy.

“Let’s go downstairs and eavesdrop,” she suggested. “I can’t hear.”

“No,” I hissed at her. “Go back to sleep.”

“What a killjoy,” she said, and I made the mistake of removing the pillow from my ears to sit up and argue with her at exactly the wrong moment, because just as I opened my mouth and began to say something, I heard –

Well –

I guess they got carried away at the last minute and forgot they were trying to be quiet.

I tried to push it out of my brain, wondering if I’d ever be able to look Kane directly in the eye again after hearing him make the sounds I’d just heard him make, when the door to the bedroom opened and Monty and Jasper bounced in.

“Are you guys hearing what we’re hearing?” said Monty excitedly. Raven beckoned them down to the floor.

“Did we miss the good stuff?” said Jasper.

“They’re good-looking people in the prime of their life,” said Raven. “Bet they go again.”

“Two dollars,” said Jasper.

“Four, and a flask of Batch #5.”

“Done. Bellamy, you want in on this action?”

“No,” I said, “I want everyone to shut up and go to bed and act normal in the morning so we don’t embarrass Mrs. Griffin.”

“Mrs. Griffin doesn’t sound embarrassed,” pointed out Jasper. “Mrs. Griffin sounds like she’s having a really good time.”

I sighed, grabbed the pillow off my bed, and went out to the living room to take the couch Monty had just vacated, while the two of them set up camp with their blankets on the floor next to Raven, ready to eavesdrop. For all I know, they were up the rest of the night.

To give them a little credit, everyone managed to behave themselves the next morning. And while I was desperately trying to forget the circumstances of how and why, it was nice to see Kane happy.

I just prayed he didn’t end up getting hurt.

* * *

Octavia searched all that afternoon but wasn’t able to find a name or address for the person who had taken out the unnamed post office box where I was supposed to reply to the advertisement.

Or, rather, she did eventually find one, but it was a John Smith who lived at an address in the Bronx that didn’t exist, which was the same thing. This sounds like a setback, but actually it was good news. It was another solid mark in the Wallace Boys’ column. Nobody with respectable motives would go through that much effort to hide their tracks.

The one real clue she did find, though, was which post office the box was actually in.

Kane had been pretty insistent on none of us leaving the bar; we had no idea how many people were out there looking for Mrs. Griffin, or how many of the rest of us might be watched too. But right now our best lead was that mailbox, and he knew it as well as I did. Finally I convinced him to let me go stake out the post office the next day. He wanted to send Lincoln with me, but I wanted to keep the Grounders out of it as long as I could. Mrs. Griffin had been right last night when she said the element of surprise was important; if the Wallace Boys found out we were watching them, we didn’t want anything tying us back to Indra. She was the ace up our sleeve.

So I borrowed a trench coat from Kane’s suitcase, pulled my collar up high and my hat down low, and hoped to God that nobody recognized that curly-haired kid that used to be a cop.

The post office was in a run-down little corner of Midtown, and there was a diner right across the street that faced it directly from a front window. I got to the post office early, right when it opened, to deliver the envelope with my trumped-up credentials. Octavia and Lincoln had helped me write my response, which was just vague enough to leave the impression that I was a big tall guy who knew how to shoot (true) who was willing to do anything for a price and didn’t care too much about staying on the right side of the law (less true). Octavia, in setting up my fake identity, had had the crafty idea to book a fake hotel room for me in a cheap part of town, and had written the letter on that hotel’s bright blue stationery; hopefully it didn’t make me look too cheerful. I tried to keep my face stern as I handed the envelope to the guy behind the counter, who gave me a long up-and-down look that seemed to indicate that he knew _exactly_ what John Smith was using that mailbox for. Apparently I looked murderous enough for him, because he gave me a friendly nod and dropped it through the mail slot.

First test passed.

I walked out and headed in deliberately the wrong direction, walking around the block, then ducked into the side entrance of the diner across the street to nab the table in the window. From here I could see everyone coming in and out of the post office.  I ordered coffee and scrambled eggs when the waitress came by, without turning my head from the window.

I had put in a discreet call to Fox, who had searched high and low through police records before finally locating one blurry photo of a nightclub raid where Cage and Dante Wallace’s faces were just faintly visible in the background. I wasn’t too hopeful that either of them were foolish enough to come pick up the post themselves, but at least it was something.

Most people, when they go to the post office, they’re, you know, _posting_ something. They arrive with an envelope or a stack of parcels, and then leave empty-handed. I was looking for the opposite; I was looking for anyone who arrived carrying nothing, and left with a bright blue envelope.

Kane’s smarter than I am about undercover things. About most things. If Kane was here with me, he would have told me to make sure I was seeing not what I expected, but what was really there. He would have told me to look at everyone as though they were a possible suspect. And I guess I thought that’s what I was doing, but I must not have been. I was straining my eyes so hard for a glimpse of Cage or Dante Wallace – or some big red-faced goon with fists built for punching, someone who looked like a mobster’s heavy – that I almost let the blue envelope walk right past me.

I was watching for someone who looked like a mobster.

I wasn’t watching for a beautiful woman in a red dress.

She crossed the street after exiting the post office with a stack of envelopes in her hand, and she was almost on top of me, walking right past the diner window, before I spotted the blue one in the pile. I hastily threw down a few dollars, grabbed my coat and hat, and stepped outside.

* * *

Tailing a mark is tricky business . . . especially if you’re following the kind of person who has reason to believe they’re being followed. But the woman in the red dress didn’t look around at all. Her walk was quick and purposeful, and something about her demeanor made me suddenly realize that I didn’t think we were going very far. She had the look of someone dashing out for a quick errand. I wondered if that post office had been selected for that very purpose – because it was nearby the place where “John Smith” was hiding.

My heart started to pound in my chest as we wove through Midtown’s tall buildings. Clarke Griffin could be on the other side of any of those windows. Clarke Griffin could be right here. She could be tied up in the back room of this butcher shop or that garage. She could be looking out at the fire escape of that apartment, or this one. She could be so nearby that if I called out her name, she might hear me.

 _I’m coming, Clarke,_ a distant part of my brain whispered, and even I was startled by how urgent it was. How important it had suddenly become to me to find this girl.

It wasn’t just how pretty she was. It wasn’t just the way her blonde hair in that photograph looked so soft you wanted to touch it, or the way her eyes sparkled at you as if she was looking straight at you through the camera. It wasn’t just that the Griffin family’s life had begun to resemble a fairy tale – not a nice one for children, but a dark and frightening one, where fearsome beasts lurked in the woods. A dead king. A queen with sad eyes. A princess in a tower, locked away by a wicked grandfather who wanted to steal her fortune.

 _What does that make you, Bellamy? A knight?_ I heard Octavia’s skeptical voice in my head and tried to push it away. No. I’m not a knight. I’m just a guy. And in that moment I was a guy who was thinking so hard about the golden-haired princess in the tower that I didn’t realize where the woman in the red dress had led me until she turned the corner and stepped inside.

I stopped, frozen, in my tracks.

We were at the Plaza Hotel.

_What was my blue envelope doing at the Plaza Hotel?_

I stood there, my mind racing, for so long that by the time I entered the lobby I had lost her. I looked around frantically, trying to see which way she’d gone. I made a circuit of the Champagne Porch, the Oak Room and the Palm Court, but didn’t see her anywhere. She must have gone up to one of the rooms – where I’d never find her.

 _Dammit, Blake,_ I thought to myself fiercely. Octavia and I had thought we were so smart to think of the hotel room trick – an anonymous address where no one would be able to trace back our reply to the advertisement. It had never occurred to me that “John Smith” might have the same idea. _Of course_ a flash team would be based out of a hotel. _Of course_ the woman in the red dress wasn’t going to stroll out of the post office and lead me right to the Wallace Boys’ hideout in the middle of the day. It made perfect logical sense, but it still felt like a punch in the gut. I had been so sure I was coming closer and closer to Clarke, when in fact I’d only been moving further away. I’d returned to the place she disappeared from – the farthest from her I could possibly get. I’d gone all the way back to the beginning.

But Kane was counting on me. And I told myself that it wasn’t for nothing that I’d found where at least one member of the flash team was hiding out. And I’d know that woman again if I saw her. She was tall and pretty, with thick black hair and coppery skin, and a sharp, angular face. She made me think a little of Cleopatra. I’d recognize her again in a heartbeat.

So that was something.

But still.

 _I should go home,_ I thought. _I should head back to the bar, to report in, and then come back tonight with Lincoln or Kane to watch the hotel._ There were too many exits for one man. And the Plaza is a classy place; a man in a trench coat couldn’t very well just sit down in the lobby and stare at women coming out of the elevator without one of those uniformed men behind the counter coming over to –

_Uniformed men behind the counter._

Could it be? Was my stroke of luck actually going to hold?

Yes. There he was. A guy about my age, with brown hair and friendly eyes, who looked up at me as I approached the concierge desk.

A guy wearing a nametag that said “Finn.”

“Can I help you?” he asked politely.

“You helped a friend of mine a few days ago,” I said. “He was trying to get his hands on a burgundy Valentino.”

Finn’s eyes snapped up and went big and wide.

“Did he find what he was looking for?” he said in a guarded voice, and I nodded.

“It wasn’t at the apartment,” I said, “but it turned up that night. Safe and sound now.” He breathed a sigh of relief. “But I’m actually looking for something very different,” I added. “I’m looking for” – I thought back, trying hard to remember and get the words right – “for a rose beaded Lanvin evening dress, that appears to have gone missing.” He flinched and cast a worried look over his shoulder, checking to see if anyone was listening in. “And I have an idea that someone in your hotel might know something about it.”

He tensed up suddenly, and I looked over my shoulder, following his gaze to where a stern-looking man in the doorway of the office labeled “MANAGER” was staring at me with suspicion. Finn gave me a look.

“I’m very sorry sir,” he said, loud enough to be overheard, “but I don’t think I can help you. Have a pleasant afternoon.” And he stuck out his hand. I shook it, and felt him press something small and cold into it.

It was a room key.

“Room 309,” he said in a quiet voice. “Go out the front entrance so they see you leave, then go around the block and come in through the restaurant. I’ll meet you there in ten minutes.”

* * *

“Finn Collins,” he said, closing the door of the empty hotel room behind him.

“Bellamy Blake,” I said, and we shook hands again. Finn took a seat in one of the armchairs in front of the small fireplace in the suite’s parlor, and I took the other.

“You’re helping that detective look for the missing girl?”

I looked at Finn Collins’ honest, worried eyes, and I thought about him risking his job to get Kane into Mrs. Griffin’s building, and how Kane would never have known that she wasn’t the murderer if he hadn’t seen that spotless apartment with the carpet out of place. I thought about the flash team coming in and out right past his desk, and I thought about the woman in the red dress, and I thought about how somewhere in this hotel there was somebody who might be able to lead me right to whatever garage or warehouse or seedy old pub down by the harbor Clarke Griffin was locked up in.

So I told Finn Collins everything.

I told him about the six missing girls locked inside the Mount Weather, and about the dead body on Abigail Griffin’s living room floor. I told him about Griffin Railways and the car in the alley and I told him about the Wallace Boys and the newspaper advertisement and the blue envelope that I had followed back from the post office to the lobby downstairs, where I had lost the woman in the red dress.

He listened with wide, surprised eyes, but he took it well. He believed me. And when I had finished the whole story, he looked at me and said something that knocked me absolutely sideways.

“If I were Abigail Griffin I’d start with her shareholders’ portfolio,” he said unexpectedly.

I stared.

“What are you talking about?”

“The only one that jumped out at me right away,” he said thoughtfully, continuing as though I hadn’t spoken, “was the Irish mob in Boston. But that’s only a rumor.”

“What’s a rumor?”

“That the Irish mob owns stock in Griffin Railways,” he said, as though it were obvious.

My jaw dropped.

“Hotel staff at a place like this spend a lot of time being invisible in plain sight,” he said, by way of explanation. “You walk into a room to freshen drinks or deliver a pressed tuxedo while people are on the telephone, or arguing with their children, or in the bath. You see things, and you hear things. I’ve picked up a little bit about the business world, here and there. I’ve heard that the Irish mob invested heavily a few years ago in transportation infrastructure – trains and shipping. And the others – oil, logging, cattle, the hatpin manufacturers? All businesses that ship overland by train. And a railway company would be the kind of dependable, prudent investment a Texas oil man or an Oregon timber baron would find comfortingly solid. They all think alike, rich men. They trust people like them. They’d put their fortunes in Carson Griffin without a sideways glance. If those girls are all wealthy heiresses to large fortunes, and you're looking for a link between them, I’d bet every one of them owns Griffin Railways stock.”

My heart stopped beating.

_There it was._

I suddenly saw everything. I saw the whole thing, right there in front of me.

“I need to use the telephone,” I said urgently, and he nodded. The one in the room only rang down to the front desk, but there was a phone box at the end of the hallway.  Finn stood guard, watching the stairwell for passersby, while I called the bar.

Kane answered on the first ring.

“Bellamy?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Thank God. Octavia’s been worried sick that we haven’t heard from you all morning. What did you find out?”

“The flash team is based out of the Plaza,” I said. “There’s a woman with black hair, probably late thirties, real pretty, wearing a red dress – or, she was this morning. She’s the one that came to collect the post. I lost her in the Plaza lobby, but I’m here with your concierge friend Finn Collins and we have a big problem.”

“What is it?”

“I know what the connection is between the six kids inside the _Mount Weather_ ,” I said. “I know why _those_ girls, on _those_ dates, in _that_ order. I know everything.”

“Why is that a problem?”

“Because the Wallace Boys are going to kill Clarke Griffin.”

I heard him breathe in sharply on the other end of the phone. “How do you know?” he said finally.

“Ask Abigail who gets control of Griffin Railways if she, Jacob and Clarke _all_ die before Clarke turns twenty-one.”

“I don’t have to ask, I have it right here,” he said. “She had her lawyer send over a copy of Carson Griffin’s will so we could see it.”

“Who gets it?”

“The actual estate itself,” he said, “the cash, the house and land, all the hard assets, they get divided up between a dozen or so distant relatives. The stocks go back into the company.”

“Not to another person.”

“No.”

“So if all three Griffins die, _nobody_ has fifty-one percent of Griffin Railways. It all gets broken up into tiny bits and pieces.”

“What are you –“

“Nyko said one ship _could_ make it to all those ports in the order we mapped them,” I went on, words tumbling out of my mouth all on top of each other as all the pieces clicked into place in my mind. “But he said he didn’t know why anyone _would_ unless there was some pressing reason why you had to be in a particular city on a particular day.”

“Right.”

“What if it was their birthdays?” I said breathlessly. “What if the ship came to take them all _after_ they had come of age and come into their inheritance, but _before_ they had time to do anything with it? The police files have ages, but not dates. Have Octavia look up their birth certificates. I’d bet you anything they were each taken within a week of their birthdays. That’s why the order was so strange – West Coast to East Coast to West Coast again. There really was a reason why they had to be in each city on a particular day. They couldn’t take the girls before they’d signed all their paperwork, but they didn’t want to wait so long that any of them sold off any stocks.”

“Bellamy, I still don’t see –“

“It’s a _hostile takeover_ , Kane,” I said. “Dante Wallace wants that company, and right now his ship is headed for 58th Street Pier with a cargo hold full of Griffin Railways shareholders.”

“Oh my God.”

“Clarke is only the insurance policy,” I said. “In case something goes wrong. But unless we do something, the second that boat docks and Dante Wallace gets those girls, he becomes one of the richest men in the United States.  And Clarke Griffin is dead.”


	16. Chapter 16

** **

_(Palm Court at the Plaza Hotel, circa 1920)_

 

**BELLAMY BLAKE**

**CASE REPORT: CLARKE GRIFFIN**

_**(continued)** _

I didn’t have to wait for Kane to get Mrs. Griffin to call her attorney back and get her hands on that shareholder file. I knew Finn Collins was right.

The one thing I’d held onto, ever since we had first learned the story of Dante Wallace and his daughter’s elusive fortune, was that Clarke Griffin’s life was in no danger until she turned twenty-one in November. That was the only thing that made me breathe a little easier. That was the only comfort I had – that Wallace would not, could not kill her in the next three months.

But we didn’t have three months.

We had three days.

It had become increasingly clear to me, as I turned it over and over in my head, that our hope of finding Clarke when we went to the dock to meet the Mount Weather was futile. No, he would go to the pier, he would collect the other girls, and once they were all secured, he would telephone whatever henchman was standing guard over Clarke in a dank warehouse someplace, and he would say, _“The package has been delivered,”_ or _“the Ark has landed,”_ or _“the black crow flies at dawn,”_ or whatever mobsters said to other mobsters, and then the man would say “copy that, boss,” in his heavy Queens accent, and then he would hang up the phone and shoot Clarke Griffin in the back of the head.

She was never getting anywhere near that ship. We were no closer to finding her. We still had no idea where, in a city of 5.6 million people, she actually was.

Three days. That was all I had. Three days, or she was dead.

I sat down heavily in the armchair across from Finn Collins, leaned my head back and closed my eyes. For every step forward, I took three steps back. I had found the flash team’s hideout, but gotten no closer to Clarke Griffin. I had identified at least one person involved with the Wallaces – the woman in red – but I couldn’t very well stake out the lobby just waiting for her to show back up again. I had spotted the thread connecting the six other missing girls – or rather, Finn had – but all that had accomplished was to set in motion a ticking clock on Clarke Griffin’s life.

I hoped that Raven was having more luck with the red sports car than I was having here. I hoped by the time I next called to check in, Octavia would have received a response to my gunman-for-hire job application. I hoped Indra would come through with a last-minute miracle.

I hoped.

Because I hadn’t gotten us anywhere.

I was afraid I’d already failed.

I shook myself out of my dazed state, remembering that Finn was on the clock and we’d already been up there for half an hour.

“Is there anything else I can do for you?” he said. “Since I’m here.”

I thought about it.

“Is anyone in the Griffins’ rooms?” I asked. He shook his head.

“Not since they checked out. Or, I suppose, someone must have checked out for them. It could have been done by telephone. The rooms have been cleaned, you’re not likely to find anything, but you’re welcome to go look around.” He thought for a second. “Stay here,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

I paced for a few minutes before he returned with a porter’s jacket and a key. “Put this on,” he said. “It won’t get you past any of the hotel staff, so watch your back, but it will keep the guests from looking at you twice. This is the sixth floor master key, it opens every room on that floor.”

I shook his hand gratefully. “You’ve been a huge help,” I said.

He shook his head. “It’s the least I could do,” he said. “We have to find that girl. If there’s anything else I can do for you, anything at all –“

“I’ll find you,” I said. “Thanks.”

He left me alone in the room to change my jacket, wet my hair in the sink and desperately try to flatten it down to look a little more respectable, and head up the rear staff-only stairwell to the sixth floor.

Room 625 was at the far end of the hallway from the utility stairwell. I stood there for a moment, scanning the long corridor for any movement, hoping to God a room service waiter wouldn’t suddenly emerge and ambush me. I took a deep breath and began to step out of the stairwell, then froze as a door opened no more than twenty feet away from me. I pressed my back into the shadows, inside the stairwell doorway, closed the door all but a crack, and peered out.

My heart stopped beating.  Against all odds, there she was.

The woman in the red dress.

Not five minutes after collapsing in despair that I had lost her entirely in this massive, crowded building with hundreds of rooms, I had stumbled upon her completely by accident.

And she was leaving her suite.

_And I had the sixth floor master key in my pocket._

Thank the Lord for Finn Collins.

It was a gamble, for damned sure; I could open the door and walk into a pack of armed goons. And even in this jacket, I didn’t look much like a porter. But my gut instinct told me that if she was part of a flash team of Wallace gangsters staying in the Plaza, she would insist on her own hotel room. She looked like the kind of woman who usually got what she asked for. And they’d want to keep a low profile in public; male guests coming out of a single woman’s hotel room at all hours would cause talk.

Talk was the last thing they’d want.

No, I felt as sure as I could feel that wherever the woman in red was going, she had not left an armed mobster sitting on the bed of her hotel room with a gun pointed at the door.

I hoped.

I steeled myself, took a deep breath, and – for appearance’s sake, in case any guests happened to see me – knocked very lightly. I didn’t expect an answer, obviously, and had just gone to my pocket to retrieve the master key when my blood froze in my veins as the door swung wide open.

* * *

This is important.

I want to get this part right.

I’m not good with words, like I said. Not like Kane is. I didn’t have the words for it then, for the things I was thinking and feeling. I’m not even sure I have them now. But this is the best way I can think of to describe it: Have you ever read a book – some huge, sprawling epic book, like Homer or Dostoyevsky, or one of those other giant books about war that Kane's always making me read, where the author introduces a whole crowd of characters at the same time, and shines just the faintest little bit of extra light on one of them, and you suddenly realize, “Oh. You’re going to be important later”? But you don’t quite know _how_ you know that, because it isn’t _obvious_ , there’s no lightning bolt or anything, you just have . . . I don’t know. A feeling.

I’m not explaining this very well, but do you know that feeling I mean?

That’s how it was with Kane. That very first night, when we were sitting outside our apartment in the hallway and he came home and saw us there. He knelt down until he was right at eye level with Octavia and he listened to her explain about the kitchen cupboard and he got this look on his face and a part of my life shifted, just a little bit, and clicked into place. It wasn’t a bolt from the blue. It was just a little bit of extra light. But I knew. I knew that somebody saw us – really truly _saw_ us, for the first time in our lives – and I knew we’d never be alone in that hallway again. I couldn’t have explained it to you then – I’m barely explaining it now – but you see what I mean.

I’m telling you all this because it’s important.  I knew it was important, even then.  The very first time I pulled her photograph out of her police file, I'd felt it - that little bit of extra light.

The first time that my life shifted and clicked into place, I was nine years old and looking up into the kind eyes of Marcus Kane.

The second time, I was twenty-four and staring through a hotel room doorway at the impossible, inexplicable, baffling sight of Clarke Griffin.

Standing right in front of me, in the last place on earth I'd expected to find her:

Two doors down from her own hotel room.


	17. Chapter 17

**BELLAMY BLAKE**

**CASE REPORT: CLARKE GRIFFIN**

_**(continued)** _

 

One summer afternoon, when Octavia was nine and I was thirteen, Kane took us out to Coney Island for the day.  That's a time in a kid's life when a four-year gap between him and his baby sister feels like a century, and the whole ride out on the train she and I had been bickering about what to see first.  I was only interested in two things: eating as many ice cream cones as I could sneak past Kane, who had told us very firmly that our limit was one apiece; and riding the Cyclone over and over.  But the Cyclone was on the far end of the park, and Octavia wanted to go see the magicians and the performing monkeys on the boardwalk, and Kane insisted we all stick together; so, against my will, Octavia got to do her thing first.  I thought magic was dumb kid stuff, and said so, but Octavia shushed me, seating herself on a wooden bench and pulling me down next to her as the magician stepped forward in his black cape and took a bow.  Octavia watched with big wide eyes as the show began. 

And after only a moment or two, so did I. 

All thoughts of ice cream and rollercoasters were banished from my mind, and I was completely hooked.  Over and over, the magician pulled the Queen of Hearts out of surprising and unexpected places.  "But I _watched_ him put it back in the deck!" I whispered to Kane, who only smiled.  "I _saw_ it!"

"You _think_ you saw it," he said, as the magician pulled the Queen out of Octavia's pocket, making her squeal with giddy delight.  "Again! Again!" she exclaimed.  So he did it again.  The Queen was inside his hat and under the bench, in the handbag of a woman passing by and stuck through the collar of a dog.  Every time I watched with sharp, keen eyes as he placed the card back in the middle of the deck, and every time I exhaled in deep frustration as he fooled me again and again. I was as mesmerized as Octavia, though I'd never have admitted it.

"Let me see it one more time," I would say coolly, with the bored eyes of a world-weary thirteen-year-old who knows too much to be impressed by anything, and the magician - who knew that stubborn young boys who think they've seen it all were his best audience - obliged.

We stayed there for twenty minutes while he pulled cards out of pockets and rabbits out of hats and made nickels disappear, and I never spotted it.  Not one trick.  Not one time.

“I was watching so carefully,” I protested to Kane when we finally moved on to the ice cream cart. “I was watching that card every second.”

“You weren’t,” he said. “He only made you _think_ that you were.”

“Because he’s _magical_ ,” sighed Octavia happily, and Kane laughed, reaching out with a paper napkin to wipe the chocolate ice cream off her face.

“Not quite,” corrected Kane, who walked a careful balance between never puncturing Octavia’s stubborn optimism but also never lying to her. “It’s a very impressive skill called sleight-of-hand, and it seems like magic because it tricks your brain. Did you notice the way his hands moved? How your eyes followed his hands wherever they went?” We both nodded. “The magician’s job is to fool you into seeing only what they want you to see. Your eyes were following his hand gestures, so you weren’t watching the card. That’s what sleight-of-hand means. You take something very simple – like palming a card and moving it to a different place – and you bury it under something very complicated, lots of hand-waving and gestures and ‘look over here!’ and magic words. And then you lose sight of the simple thing underneath, which was right there all along.”

Octavia lost interest halfway through his explanation and returned to her ice cream cone, but then, he hadn’t really been talking to Octavia. I turned his words over and over in my mind for the rest of the day, and even dragged Kane and Octavia back to the boardwalk on our way to catch the train, insisting that I'd be able to spot the trick if I saw it just _one more time._

But I never did.

It had been years since I'd thought about that trip to Coney Island, it had long since been crowded out of my memory.  But the moment that door opened to reveal Clarke Griffin standing behind it, I flashed right back to that wooden bench on the boardwalk. 

 _It's a magic trick,_ I thought.  _"The Mysterious Disappearing Girl."_  

I didn't know this then - I hardly knew anything then - but that thought in the back of my mind was actually the closest any of us had yet come to grasping the real truth:

That this was the most brilliantly-executed sleight-of-hand misdirect any of us had ever seen.  That boardwalk magician would have taken off his hat and bowed out of professional respect. 

The key to the whole thing, of course, was that it wasn’t Clarke Griffin that Finn Collins had recognized that night.  It was her _dress._

 _Take something very simple,_ Kane had said to me, _and bury it underneath something very complicated._ So you begin with the abduction of a girl.  Clean.  Easy.  A pair of strong arms, a little chloroform, a hotel room paid for in cash.  Then you add the sleight-of-hand, the part that makes it seem like magic.  First, a faked invitation to a spectacular underground party, delivered by hand to Clarke’s hotel room and purporting to be from her friend Wells. Then, a blonde wig and a change of clothes, so that the Cleopatra lookalike I followed from the post office strides out through the crowded Plaza Hotel lobby in a rose-beaded Lanvin and drives off in a flashy red sports car, making a decidedly memorable exit. She is spotted leaving, according to plan; Raven would probably have found witnesses who recognized that car and would have seen a blonde girl in a designer dress speeding away in it. The woman in the wig drives her ostentatious speedster around the city for awhile, then stashes it within walking distance of the Plaza, changes her clothes in the car (accidentally losing an earring in the process) and returns to the hotel. Finn Collins sees a blonde girl in a recognizable dress leave the hotel lobby, but never connects her to the black-haired woman who reenters half an hour or so later.  Why would he? And so, weeks later, after the girl has been missing long enough that something finally must be done, the magician's hands have misdirected your eye and led you out the door, to a mythical party that never happened, somewhere deep in the heart of the city, where drinking and dancing and drugs and a rowdy crowd of Clarke Griffin's bohemian friends would jointly concoct all kinds of misbehavior.  _Clarke Griffin left her room at midnight in a pink dress._ That was the only fact we all felt sure of.  And so, obediently, like children watching a magic show, we looked where we were told to look and we followed the arrow of suspicion as it pointed us far, far away from the Plaza Hotel - where Clarke was bound, gagged and chloroformed on a bed three doors down from her mother.

_Take something very simple . . ._

What is the simplest possible explanation why no one ever saw or heard Clarke Griffin returning to the hotel?  _Because she never left it._

We had been chasing down six heiresses on a ship traveling from port to port across the whole country, and all along the seventh hadn't even made it as far as the elevator.

I didn’t know this at the time, of course. I didn’t know at that moment how close I was to the truth. I didn’t know that I was back on the Coney Island boardwalk again, watching a far craftier and more subtle mind than my own conceal something very, very simple in plain sight by fooling my mind into thinking it was something very complicated. I didn’t realize how wrong we’d all been, about everything.

All I knew, as I stood there in the hallway gaping like an idiot at a girl in a soft gray dress with blonde hair falling loose all down her shoulders, was that I had been fooled by sleight-of-hand and lost sight of the Queen I thought I'd been following.  I could hardly blame Finn Collins for watching the dress and missing the girl when we had all been doing the exact same thing.

I stared, open-mouthed, with an idiotic expression on my face, my brain whirling as I frantically tried to figure out how on earth she could possibly, _possibly_ be on the sixth floor of the Plaza Hotel two weeks after she vanished from the room at the end of the hall.

“May I help you?” she finally said, very politely, which snapped me back to reality.

“Clarke,” I said, my voice coming out in a hoarse whisper, and she flinched and shrunk back away from me.

“I’m sorry, you must have the wrong room,” she said, and I saw her looking nervously over my shoulder towards the stairway.

“You’re Clarke Griffin,” I said urgently, and reached out a hand for her. She pulled away, and I could see panic dawn in her eyes. “Clarke, it’s okay,” I said. “I’ve come to get you out of here. Come with me.”

She shook her head. “I can’t.”

“Then let me in. We need to talk.”

“I can’t do that either.”

“Clarke, your life is in danger,” I said urgently. “We have to get you out of this room before that woman comes back.”

“There is a man with a rifle on the fire escape of the building across the street,” she said quietly, "and he can see into this room. You're going to get us both killed.”

“What’s his line of sight?” I asked. “Tell me exactly.”

“He has a straight line from the window behind me to this door,” she said without moving. “Get out of here, whoever you are,” she said. “We’ve already been talking too long.”

I looked around the room as discreetly as I could. It was a large suite. The front entrance in which we currently stood opened into a small sitting room, behind which was a large picture window. To my left was a doorway that led to a bedroom, whose curtains were drawn.

“Can he see into the bedroom?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No,” she said, “but you have no way of getting inside.”

“Yes, I do,” I said, startled into a grin as I spotted what I was looking for – a door from the bedroom wall into the adjoining room next door. “Go into the bedroom and unlock that door from your side. I’m coming around the long way.” She nodded. “Wait,” I said. “Do you have a dollar?”

She looked puzzled.

“Put a dollar in my hand,” I said. “Like you’re tipping me. If the guy reports in on you, and asks what the porter was doing there, you can make something up.”

“Lorelai sent out the laundry this morning,” she said. “We’ll say it was that.”

I nodded, gave what hopefully looked like a respectful nod, humbly received the tip she made a big show of offering me, then stepped back and let her close the door in my face. As soon as it was shut all the way I ducked into the adjoining room with my master key. This was obviously Lorelai’s room, elegant clothes strewn everywhere and an impressive array of guns on the windowsill. She must have made arrangements with housekeeping to leave her alone. I unlatched the connecting door between the bedrooms just as Clarke pulled it open and let me in.

“She disappears twice a day for between fifty-two and fifty-five minutes each time,” said Clarke without preamble. “We’ve already used five of them, so talk fast. Start with who the hell you are, and who sent you.”

I was a little startled - not in a bad way, more intrigued than anything else - about the way she immediately took charge.  This wasn't quite what I had expected it to be like, saving the beautiful golden-haired princess in the tower.  I watched her lean back against the wall with her arms folded, glaring at me with stony eyes as though I was an intruder. If you removed the armed man on the fire escape from the equation, I thought, nobody would think this girl needed any rescuing.

“Come with me,” I said. “I have friends that can help you. I can get you out of here.”

“I’m not leaving until I know who you are,” she retorted firmly. “For all I know, you could be more dangerous than Lorelai.”

“Clarke –“

“Forty-nine minutes and counting,” she reminded me. “Start talking. Who are you and how did you find me?”

“My name is Bellamy Blake,” I told her, weighing whether or not to mention that I was a cop and deciding, on the whole, it was truer at the moment (while I was still on probation) not to. “I work for a private detective named Marcus Kane, and we’ve been looking for you for two weeks. Your life is in danger. I have to get you to safety before Thursday at midnight or all hell breaks loose. That’s how I ended up here. I found you sort of by accident, it’s a long story, but I was following the woman in the red dress.”

“Lorelai.”

“Yeah. I was following Lorelai. And I stumbled on you.”

“What do you want with me?” she asked, a little tersely. “Are you here for the money? Because I told Lorelai and I’m telling you, I can’t get to any of it until November.”

“I don't care about the money, Clarke,” I said. “I'm here for you.  We’re all working for your mother.”

Her whole face changed, and I watched her crumple a tiny bit.

“My mother?” she whispered, her eyes beginning to fill with tears, and I felt my heart crack a little bit at the sad, hopeful look on her face. “My mother is _alive_?”

If you want to know who Clarke Griffin is - really know her, really understand her - you should begin here.  Here, in this hotel room, where she had been held hostage for two weeks with a rifle pointed at her head . . . and yet the first moment that a possibility of rescue appeared in front of her, all she could think about was her mother.

“Yes,” I nodded. “She’s alive. She’s looking for you. We've all been looking for you.  But she’s not safe either, until we get you out of here.  Come with me."  _Please don't ask me about your father,_ I prayed.  _Please don't ask me about Jacob Griffin.  Not just yet._

She nodded at this, following me out of Lorelai's bedroom door into the hallway, where we ducked down the stairwell towards the empty third-floor room where I'd met Finn Collins. 

"You're my fourth attempt," she said as we walked.  "Lorelai keeps her door bolted from that side, and no hotel staff are allowed in.  So I couldn't get out that way.  But I've tried other things. The first time I tried the window ledge, to see if I could make it to another open room. The guy on the fire escape caught me. Lorelai dragged me back inside, and gave me this.” She tilted her head just a little, and I could see the faint rosy blossom of a bruise forming on her cheek, where she had obviously been struck very hard. I took a deep breath and had to clench and then unclench my fists a couple of times to avoid reacting. “The second time I tried calling down to the front desk to ask them to ring the police,” she went on, "so Lorelai disconnected the phones. And then she told me that if I tried again, that the men she worked for would go after my family. That terrible things would happen to my parents. To people I loved.” She swallowed hard and looked down at the ground. “I didn’t believe her,” she said softly. “Or maybe I just thought I was smarter, I was stronger. That it would all be okay, because I was the good guy. So I waited until she had run out for an errand and I ducked out into the hallway and ran. I made it almost to the lobby before they caught me – she’s got men all over this building, they just look like regular people but they’re not, they work for her – and when they dragged me back here, she told me -"  She stopped just then, as though struggling to get the words out.  I opened the door to Room 309 and led her inside.  She didn't sit, but stood uncomfortably in the middle of the room, arms wrapped tightly around herself. 

"She told you . . ." I prompted gently, sitting on the edge of the bed and looking up at her.

"That I had just signed my parents' death warrants," she said, unable to look at me.  "She showed me the newspaper.  I know about . . . what happened to my father. But she told me my mother was dead too.”

“No,” I said, “she’s alive. But both of you are in danger.”  We traded the bare bones of our stories, eyes watching the clock, wondering what would happen when Lorelai returned to find her gone.  Clarke told me how she had been taken from her room, how Lorelai had traded clothes with her and locked her in the room under armed guard, where she had remained ever since.  The front desk thought Lorelai was staying here with an elderly, ailing aunt who didn't like to be disturbed, so she had made arrangements for the staff not to enter either room.  I, in turn, told Clarke about the other missing girls and about our investigation, about Griffin Railways and the _Mount Weather_ and the Wallace Boys.  There were things that were not my story to tell - that Dante Wallace was her grandfather, for instance, or whatever the thing was going on between Kane and her mother - but I didn't leave out anything else.  She listened carefully, asked a few clarifying questions, and then when I finished my recitation she tilted her head and nodded thoughtfully and said something rather surprising.

"I knew it," she told me. “I knew it wasn’t about the money.”

I stared at her, puzzled.  “What do you mean?”

“There was no ransom,” she explained.  "I'm not of age yet, which means my parents have power of attorney over the estate, so someone should have sent a ransom note to my mother.  But nobody ever did.  Then I thought, well, maybe they're leaving her out of it because they're just going to hold onto me until November and then get the whole thing when I turn twenty-one.  But no one asked anything.  Nobody asked me what bank the money would be in, or how long would it take to access it, could I draw funds now, where were my stocks, how much of the fortune was liquid and how much was hard assets.  If you've kidnapped someone because you want their money, you'd have a damn plan for getting that money.  But Lorelai didn't seem interested at all.  The questions she asked me had nothing to do with that."

"What questions did she ask you?" I inquired curiously.

She sat down next to me then, and her face was thoughtful.  "It was strange," she said.  "The whole thing.  Their questions were all about my parents."

"Your parents?"

She nodded.  "Mostly my father."

"What about him?"

She shrugged.  "Nothing that seemed to make any sense," she admitted.  "Past conversations I'd had with him, business trips he'd taken, people he knew or used to know.  They'd hold up a photograph of some friend or associate of his and ask me to describe everything that I knew about their relationship.  But my father worked mostly out of Chicago, I didn't know that much about his work.  Or his friends.  I couldn't tell them anything.  But I'm sure of one thing - whoever killed my father, I don't think it had anything to do with Griffin Railways.  That might be a side benefit, getting their hands on that money, but they were asking me questions like my dad knew something.  Like he had a piece of information - a secret - that somebody else was willing to kill him to keep from getting out."  She looked at me then.  "And they seem to think he told it to me," she said.  "I think they want to find out if I know the secret too."

"Do you?"

She laughed a little at that.  "I wish I did!" she said.  "This would all have been a lot easier.  But I can't tell them what I don't know.  And they're being careful, I think, not to give too much away.  They won't tell me what they're really looking for; they won't say, 'Did your father ever visit such-and-such a place on this day and time' or 'Did your father ever have any dealings with so-and-so' or anything specific.  Anything that might jog a real memory.  So I still have no idea what it is they think I know." 

_Take something very simple, and bury it under something very complicated.  
_

"Bellamy?" she said quizzically, watching as my eyes went unfocused and I stared off into nothingness.

"Hang on," I said, my heart pounding in my chest.  "I can see it.  I think I'm beginning to see it."  She watched me, puzzled, but didn't interrupt as I laboriously fit the pieces together inside my mind.

Who was Lorelai searching for a connection with?  Whose relationship with Jacob Griffin was she really investigating?

It seemed, the more I thought about it, completely impossible that Jacob could be connected with the Wallace Boys.  There would be no reason to question Clarke about what her father might have known or not known about them.  Lorelai worked for the Wallace Boys; she would know anything Jacob knew, or would be able to find it out.

But the Wallace Boys were trying to keep a secret hidden, a secret they were afraid Clarke Griffin might know.  And if that secret didn't belong to Dante Wallace, _whose was it_?

Strip away the sleight-of hand, I thought to myself - strip away Griffin Railways and the _Mount Weather_ and the ransacking of Kane's office and the Grounders and the blood on Abigail's floor and even Clarke's kidnapping - and what are you left with?

Jacob Griffin's death.

That was the simple thing.  The one hard fact.  Jacob Griffin had been murdered.  The why, the how, the plot to frame Abigail for it - all of that was window dressing.  All of that was part of the trick.

Clarke was right; it wasn't about the money.  The money mattered, but it was secondary.  There were two very distinct minds at work here, and they operated in very different ways.  We had been following the empty hand, the one that waved around in front of our faces, distracting our gaze.  Misdirection.  That was the Wallace Boys, I was sure of it.  Ambition and theatrics, violence and bloodshed. That was how they worked.  Raven had said it herself - the Wallace Boys couldn’t even pull off a straightforward bank robbery without leaving twenty dead bodies in their wake.

But the Queen of Hearts wasn't in that hand.

No, there was someone else here.  Someone with a cool, clear, logical mind, someone who valued simplicity and order.  Someone who needed Clarke taken somewhere quietly for questioning and opted for the path of least resistance; rather than haul her across town to a warehouse where her pink dress might attract attention, simply move her down the hall to a different hotel room.  Someone calculating and clever, someone hiding in plain sight while the Wallace Boys smuggled kidnapped heiresses in their cargo hold and drew our eyes away from the real target.

Someone who wanted Jacob Griffin dead for reasons that were entirely their own.

The clock on the mantel chimed just then, and we both started.  Lorelai would be returning to the room upstairs in six minutes, and while I didn't want to risk meeting her on the way, I wanted Clarke out of the building before Lorelai came back.  "Hurry," I said, standing and pulling her up.  "We can take the staff stairwell down to the back exit and get a taxi from there."

Clarke looked at me for a long moment, then shook her head.  "I'm going back upstairs," she said.  "I'm staying."

I stared at her.

"Come on, Bellamy," she said.  "You have to come let me back into Lorelai's room."  And she took off out the door, back up the stairwell, while I chased behind her.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" I hissed, baffled and annoyed.  "You were out.  You were safe.  You got away."

"And if we did it once, we can do it again," she said, taking the steps two at a time and leaving me racing to catch up, "but we're not doing it today."

“I don’t have time to argue with you, Clarke.”

"Then don't."

“I promised your mother,” I told her, thinking about Abby’s face and the way she took my hand that night at the speakeasy. “I promised her I’d keep you safe.”

That stopped her.  She paused at the top of the stairs, one hand on the sixth floor doorway, picturing her mother's face in her mind.  But then she steeled herself, shook it off, and swung the door wide open, headed back towards Lorelai's room.  "No," she said, "this is the only way."

"Clarke, why on earth -"

"Because _they'll turn the ship around_ ," she finally snapped, and it silenced me.  She snatched the key out of my hand, let herself into Lorelai's room and opened the connecting doorway to her own.  "If Lorelai comes back here and I'm gone, you and I both know exactly what she'll do.  She'll radio the _Mount Weather_ and tell them they need a new plan.  The ship won't dock in New York.  They'll take the girls somewhere else and you'll never find them.  They'll be as good as dead.  You rescue me, you kill all six of them."

My blood ran cold, and I realized I had forgotten the other girls. 

"The best thing you can do right now," she said, “is to get yourself assigned to that security team and get those girls out of the _Mount Weather._   Whatever’s going to happen, Bellamy, it’s going to happen at 58th Street Pier on Thursday night, and you have to be there. If he loses the girls, he’ll have to keep me alive.  I'm safe here at least until then."

I didn’t say anything. She was right. I didn’t like it, but I knew she was right.

“This is bigger than me,” she insisted. “This is about taking down the Wallace Boys once and for all. If you trust Marcus Kane, if you trust the Grounders, then I trust them too. But me and you,” she said, “we have to keep those girls safe. And the only way to do that is for you to put that guard uniform on and do everything they tell you. And for me to stay right where I am.  I need to figure out what Lorelai's connection is to the Wallace Boys and how my father fits into this.  We have work to do.  I don’t like it any more than you do," she added grimly, seeing the look on my face.  "But we have the advantage over them, don’t you see that? They don’t have any idea that we know. We’re on the inside. We just need to keep our heads down and wait. And when the ship docks, we’ll have to be ready.”

I looked at her for a long moment before I nodded.  She smiled at me and took my hand.

"You got me out of here once," she said.  "You can do it again.  I have faith in you."

There were so many things I wanted to say to her.

I wanted to tell her that I dreamed her face every night, that I already felt as though we had known each other all our lives, that the shape of my entire existence had shrunk down to the size of that three-by-four inch photograph of her face and my urgent need to bring her home safely. I wanted to put my arms around her and bury my face in that hair that looked like sunlight.

But I didn’t.

“Go, Bellamy,” she said, “before she gets back. Go.  And tell my mother -"  She stopped, and I looked back at her over my shoulder.  "Tell her I love her," she said simply, and I nodded.

Then I closed the door between us, locked the princess back in the tower and left through Lorelai’s room, making it to the utility stairwell just in the nick of time, disappearing through the heavy wooden door just as a bright red dress stepped out of the elevator.


	18. Chapter 18

 

**WEDNESDAY NIGHT: KANE**

Octavia, who was with Lincoln and Indra rounding up a small army of Grounders to stake out the pier tomorrow night, had called in to tell us that there was a message waiting in Bellamy’s fake hotel room. He had been hired for the Mount Weather job and he needed to report in at an address in Queens that night. Which was good news, except that it had been hours since anyone had heard from Bellamy, and the mood at our headquarters was tense.

Or rather, _Abby_ was tense.

Everyone else had tactfully disappeared – Octavia and Lincoln to go meet Indra, Raven to run all over town tracking the movements of that red sports car, Monty and Jasper downstairs to the moonshine still – leaving the two of us alone. I was sitting on the couch in the war room with a pile of Griffin Railways paperwork, watching Abby pace back and forth.

“Why hasn’t he called?” she would stop and snap at me every ten or fifteen minutes, flinging down the file in her hands in frustration. “He should have called.”

“He will.”

“Should we go after him? We should go after him. Call Indra, have her send Lincoln –“

“Abby, he’ll call when he has something to tell us.”

And then she would sigh, and her shoulders would slump a little, and she would shoot me a look of resignation and apology, and pick the papers back up, and flip through them without really seeing what she was looking at until she got restless and began pacing again, and then we’d repeat the whole cycle from the beginning.

It was like that all day. Ever since Bellamy had called and told us about the hostile takeover, Abigail (who had informed me in a light, teasing voice the morning we woke up on the couch together, that I should feel free to start calling her Abby now, since "Abigail" was far too formal for someone whose mouth had been on her breasts) had become preoccupied with digging into the financial reports of Griffin Railways to search for clues. Finally, _finally,_ she had found something that she could actually do. Finally she felt like she was part of the team.

But she had forgotten one thing.

Jacob Griffin’s name was all over those documents.  And Abby still had not allowed herself to _feel_ anything for Jacob.

There had been panic, first, and a desperate, futile struggle to press the flow of blood back into his chest. Then shock, sending her wandering in a daze through the streets of New York to crumple into a numb little heap on my bedroom floor.  Then, by the time I arrived, out-and-out hysteria. And then she had arrived at the bar, dutifully submitted herself to Octavia’s firm but gentle care, and had just barely begun to return to herself when Indra arrived with a loaded gun and Abby was forced to dive back into the past she had tried so hard to leave behind.

And then after Indra left, there had been . . . well, me.

And as much as the two of us had enjoyed ourselves, as relaxed and happy and busy as she'd been since, still, it was one more distraction. It was one more thing pushing Jacob’s dead body further and further away, so that Abby could focus on Clarke. Could do what needed to be done. But she had only been temporarily successful, and sifting through heaps of Carson Griffin’s paperwork had brought everything back. Jacob’s signature was on every other page, and those dozens of tiny little knives to the heart left Abby raw and irritable, unable to focus on the work in front of her while all her mental and emotional strength was directed towards keeping him out of her head.

If I’d loved her any less, she'd have been driving me crazy. As it was, I just watched her helplessly, wishing there was something I could do.

The sudden shrill exclamation of the telephone startled us both out of our skins. I ran to the desk, Abby close behind, and I could feel her anxiously watching me, trying to read my face for good news or bad news.

"Octavia called," I said.  "You got the job.  You have to be in Queens at eleven p.m. tonight.  Lincoln will meet you, give you the details, and drive you out there to keep you out of trouble.  Try to look as much like a murderous thug and as little like a cop as possible.  Any more news from your end?"

"I'll say there is," he said.  "I found Clarke Griffin."

I was so astonished that I nearly dropped the telephone, startling Abby half to death.  "It's okay," I said, squeezing her hand.  "It's going to be okay."  Abby's eyes were blank and wide, and I pulled her close so she could listen in as Bellamy told us everything.  He kept it short, so he could dash off to meet Lincoln, but by the time he hung up the telephone I could feel the beginnings of a plan stirring in both our minds.

If we knew where Clarke was - and we knew that Dante Wallace was holding her hostage, alive, as a failsafe in case he didn't get the girls - then Bellamy's plan to save the girls would save Clarke too.  We needed to be at the pier to meet the ship, and to take out Wallace and his team; but if we knew exactly where Clarke was being held - down to the very room - then once we had the girls, all it would take would be an anonymous tip to the NYPD and they'd break down the door to that room. 

I took both of Abigail's hands in mine and clutched them tightly.  "She's coming home, Abby," I said.  "She's okay.  It's going to be okay.  We're going to bring her home.  We're going to end this.  It's all going to be over soon.  Clarke's coming home tomorrow."  She didn't say anything, just stepped into my arms and collapsed into them, burying her face against my chest, and that was when the dam broke.  All the tears she had been holding in over the past few horrible days poured forth. I held her close, letting her cry and cry and cry, and as I felt her body begin to go soft and limp I gently lowered us both to the floor, where I sat with my back pressed up against the wall as Abby curled up into me like a child and wept into the crisp white collar of my shirt. I cradled her in my arms, pressing kisses into her dark hair, and murmuring her name over and over again. “It’s going to be all right, Abby,” I said softly. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

I don’t know how long we sat like that. Hours went by. Monty and Jasper came home with Raven a little while later; Monty poked his head in to see if we needed anything, but when he saw us he nodded, closed the door to the war room and took the others upstairs to leave us alone. Abby’s heartrending sobs had faded, leaving her spent and exhausted, so I just held her, stroking her back and her hair, listening to the sound of her breath as it slowed and stilled and became peaceful.  Her hands on my shoulder softened.  She might have slept, a little. I sat there on the cold concrete floor of that old storage room, Bellamy’s evidence wall above my head, Abby Griffin curled up in my lap, and I felt my heart crack open and the words I had carefully resisted speaking out loud finally made themselves known.

“I am in love with you,” I whispered into her hair, not knowing if she was listening or could hear me. “I know that doesn’t make anything better. I know that doesn't change anything that's happened.  But I can’t be this near to you and not say it.”

She didn’t say anything. At first, I wasn’t certain if she had heard me. But after a long moment I felt her shift in my arms and pull away just enough that we were looking at each other. Her face was pale and tear-stained and her eyes were full of some heavy, complex emotion.

“You don’t have to say it back,” I said gently. “I know that you –“

She kissed me then, stopping my mouth - a long, sweet, sad kiss that I wasn’t sure how to read – then led me back over to the makeshift pile of couch cushions on the floor that had become our bed. I lay down beside her and wrapped her in my arms, and we fell asleep like that, in our clothes, on the floor, with Abby’s unspoken response to the thing I had said hanging there in the air between us.

 

**WEDNESDAY NIGHT: BELLAMY**

Lincoln picked me up at the Plaza in a bakery delivery truck he had borrowed from another Grounder. “I’ve driven by the address of the meet three times today,” he said as I got in, “and neither of the Wallaces have been there. Or Clarke Griffin.”

“I can help with one of those,” I said, and as we drove I told him everything that had happened. He listened quietly – Lincoln was reassuringly calm and level-headed in a crisis, which made him a valuable counterpoint to my hot-tempered sister (“and her equally hot-tempered brother,” I could imagine Octavia retorting with a glare). Then, when I had finished the whole story of meeting Clarke Griffin and everything she had told me, I could see in the rearview mirror that his jaw had clenched tightly and his hands gripped the steering wheel with extraordinary force.

“Lincoln,” I said, “what don’t I know that I should know?”

“She said they didn’t take her for the money,” said Lincoln. “She’s sure of that?”

I nodded. “They questioned her about other things, mostly related to her father – trying to establish a connection between her father and somebody, I think – but no. Dante Wallace wants that company, but he’s going to get it through those other six girls. That way he can take out all three Griffins and still be the majority shareholder of Griffin Railways.”

“Then saving the girls won’t save Clarke Griffin,” he said. “She’s dead either way.”

I shook my head. “He’ll have to keep her alive until November,” I countered, “because if we get those girls out he’ll need Clarke to sign over her shares.”

“That’s only true,” pointed out Lincoln, “if the most important thing to Dante Wallace is getting his hands on that money.”

“What else would it be?”

“I’m not sure, exactly,” he said slowly, “but you’d better hope that whatever it is that he thinks Clarke Griffin knows is secondary to him getting control of Griffin Railways. Otherwise he’ll realize she’s worth more dead than alive.”

I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

He was right.

I could be saving her life by freeing those girls, or signing her death warrant. And there was no way of guessing which way the tide would turn without any of us knowing whatever it was Dante Wallace thought she knew.

“We have to get her out of the Plaza,” I said.

He shook his head.

“She was right,” he said. “If she disappeared while the boat was still at sea, they’d turn it around before it ever came near land and we’d lose the girls. There are seven hostages, Bellamy, and we have a plan that virtually guarantees we can save at least six of them. That’s your job. Let Indra do hers. She’s got Grounders all over that hotel. If they try to take Clarke out of that room, she’ll know.”

“They could kill her in that hotel room and we’d never know it,” I said, feeling the muscles in my jaw begin to clench, and I swallowed hard, trying to keep my head cool. _Focus, Bellamy._

“I know,” said Lincoln. “I don’t like it either. But right now that’s the best we can do.”

He swerved the van left just then, pulling into a blind alley, and I realized we had arrived. The address of the meet was in a rundown area on the border between Brooklyn and Queens known as “The Hole.” And it was. The buildings around us were heaps of damp, crumbling brick, with rusted fire escapes that would be useless if you wanted to actually escape from a fire, and there was a mossy, moldy dampness to the whole place that made me feel a little sick. Lincoln got out of the drivers’ side of the van and closed it behind him, and that was the first time I noticed how he was dressed.

Lincoln’s a big, distinctive-looking guy in any situation, but back when he was the Grounders’ opium guy, and everyone in town knew who he was, he had this coat he always wore – this long black leather trench coat with a black fox fur collar he pulled up high around his chin. I’d only ever seen it hanging in his hall closet; he hadn’t worn it in years. It was his Grounder uniform, it was the wardrobe of a past life, and he wasn’t that man anymore.

But he was wearing it now.

“Lincoln,” I said warningly. “What are you doing?” He looked at me and didn’t say anything. “Get back in the car,” I said helplessly, beginning to fear that I knew what he was doing. He took a gun out of his pocket – his gun, a Grounder gun – and tossed it to me.

“This is your job interview,” he said. “You’re going to walk into that warehouse with the head of the Grounders’ opium import business at gunpoint.”

“Correction,” I said sharply. “You mean with the love of my baby sister’s life at gunpoint.” He folded his arms and looked at me coolly. His expression didn’t change. “You’re not even in the opium business anymore,” I said.

“But they don’t know that,” he pointed out. “You need to get them to trust you.”

“I’m not walking in there and handing you over to the Wallaces.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Octavia would never stand for this,” I said. “Octavia would say it isn’t worth it.”

“That’s because Octavia doesn’t know that it will be all of us next,” he said quietly, and I stared at him. “Octavia doesn’t know how Dante Wallace works. Octavia doesn’t understand that we have one chance. One strike. This is bigger than Clarke Griffin, Bellamy, this is bigger than those six girls inside that ship. This is about power. This is about Dante Wallace looking down from his window onto the city of New York and believing that it all belongs to him. Jacob Griffin found out something that could have made Wallace’s entire empire crumble to the ground, and was killed to keep him quiet. And if he thinks Jacob told Clarke and Abigail, they will be next. If he thinks Abigail told Kane, and Kane told Octavia . . . None of our lives are safe, Bellamy. And so you need him to trust you. You need to get close. You need to be the man that stands right beside him with your gun, so that when tomorrow night comes and that ship docks at 58th Street Pier, you’re close enough to Dante Wallace to kill him. The Wallace Boys have to die. That’s your real job, Bellamy. That’s why we’re here.” He smoothed down the folds of his coat, adjusted the collar, cracked his knuckles and flexed his neck a little, as if warming up for a fight, and suddenly I saw him as the Wallace Boys must have seen him. I saw a big, towering man with ice-cold eyes and no expression on his face and the outline of a gun at each hip. He looked like a shadow come to life, all black leather and fur, and if I hadn’t known him like I did I’d be afraid of him myself.

“Gun,” he said to me, gesturing to the derringer he’d just tossed towards me. Then he raised his own hands in a gesture of surrender and stepped in front of me, so I could hold the gun at his back. We walked across the street and I saw the warehouse door where the note had said to report in. I wasn’t sure how many members of the flash team were inside this building and how many were undercover at the Plaza, but I was expecting at least a handful.

So when I stepped inside, gun reluctantly drawn on Lincoln, and saw nothing but an empty concrete box, I froze.

At first I was only puzzled, wondering if we’d mistaken the address or the time. But from the way Lincoln’s entire body tensed up in front of me, I knew what he was thinking.

Something here was very wrong.

“Turn around, Bellamy,” he said quietly. “Back out to the streets. _Now_.”

But it was too late. I whirled around just in time to see the warehouse door slam shut behind us.

We were trapped.

 **  
** **THURSDAY: KANE**

We passed an anxious night waiting for word from Bellamy and Lincoln, who had both gone radio silent from the moment Lincoln arrived at the hotel last night to take Bellamy to the warehouse in Queens.  Octavia was going out of her mind with worry, and her mood wasn't helping Abigail's.  As scheduled call-in after call-in passed with no word, the tension became unbearable.  We all tried to sleep, unsuccessfully; Abby and I curled up together on the couch; we didn't make love that night, we just lay side by side, arms around each other, staring up at the ceiling and trying not to think.  Raven came over to keep Octavia company, and I heard them pacing back and forth in the bedroom above us for hours after they went up to bed.  Monty and Jasper were scarcely any better, though they were the ones that came up with the plan that kept us all from going insane.

They suggested we all spend the day at the Plaza Hotel.

Indra had Grounders undercover in two teams; one at the docks - camped out in a wide perimeter around  58th Street Pier, disguised as sailors and street urchins and prostitutes, hidden in docked sailboats and pubs and warehouses, an invisible army lying in wait until Dante Wallace stepped inside the circle and they could tighten their noose around him - and one staked out all over the hotel to watch the exits in case anyone tried to take Clarke Griffin out of the building.  And since there was nothing for any of us to do between seven in the morning, when we all resignedly gave up on pretending to sleep and got out of our beds, and eleven o'clock that night when we were all meeting at the pier, we might as well go down there and join them.  It might help, it certainly couldn't hurt, and it would keep everyone from losing their minds with worry. "If we're going to be sitting around and waiting all day anyway," Jasper had pointed out reasonably, "we might as well do it in the one building in all of New York where we know these people have actually been."

Abby's bank account and Finn the concierge's discretion procured us three rooms on three different floors; Monty and Jasper on the 5th floor, where their door overlooked the stairwell (in case Clarke came down that way) and Octavia and Raven in a room with a window over the back service entrance.  And a third room, which we all referred to politely as belonging to Abby - and which was on the 10th floor where there was no chance of her running into anyone who might recognize her on the sixth floor or below - but which I spent an embarrassing amount of time wondering about.  We weren't planning on coming back here to sleep, but if for some reason we did, then I did not have a hotel room.  Which might mean I would end up on the floor between Jasper and Monty . . . or might mean that I would get the chance to spend the night with Abigail Griffin in a real bed.

I had so many more important things to be thinking about, but that was the thought I couldn't shake.

Abby’s luggage, which had vanished from the Plaza when she had ostensibly “checked out” a few days prior, was never spotted again, and while she had store credit all over Manhattan we didn’t want her going anywhere she might be recognized. And, even after it had been spotlessly cleaned by the efficient Grounder laundress downstairs, she was (understandably) reluctant to put the gray dress back on – which was the only wardrobe she had, besides Monty’s pajamas. This meant that, for our undercover assignment in the Plaza, she had been costumed entirely from the wardrobes of Octavia and Raven, with results that made me swallow, hard, when she came down the stairs from Jasper and Monty’s bedroom.

We were all paying cash and using assumed names, and it was particularly crucial that Abby not be recognized by any of the hotel staff as the wealthy woman who had checked out earlier in the week. Her usual clothes were like her apartment – chic but impersonal, elegant neutrals and lush fabrics and classic silhouettes. But Raven and Octavia were twenty years younger and considerably more colorful, which meant that when Abigail descended the staircase the first thing I saw was a pair of bright green high-heeled shoes. The rest of her didn’t disappoint either. Octavia had loaned her a floaty green-and-white striped dress, the fabric so thin and sheer that every curve of her body was visible beneath it. She wore no hat, but Raven had curled and pinned up her hair and made up her face with the same kind of bold red lipstick the girls usually wore. Abigail Griffin the respectable, elegant socialite was gone, replaced by a sparkling, vivid girl whose dress fluttered as she walked.

“You should wear bright colors more often,” said Monty approvingly as she entered the room. “You look really nice.”

“I like that dress,” agreed Jasper. “Nice work, Octavia.”

“Wait until you see the evening dress,” said Raven. “That was my contribution.”

“Which one?” asked Monty. “Not the red one. Tell me you didn't pack her the red dress.”

“Damn right I packed the red dress,” said Raven. “If she’s going to be an undercover agent she should dress like one.”

“What’s the big deal with the red dress?” I asked curiously.

“Nothing, except there’s very little of it,” whispered Abby in a mischievous voice as she passed me to put on her coat, and I swallowed hard, again.

We checked into the hotel in pairs, spaced an hour or so apart to avoid suspicion. Abby and I went first, then Raven and Monty, then Jasper and Octavia. By one in the afternoon all six of us were lunching in the Palm Court, spread out at three separate tables to keep an eye on the entrances. Octavia and Raven had taken their secret-agent mission very seriously; Raven, who rarely wore dresses, had borrowed some flowery thing from Octavia with a pair of long white gloves; she and Monty looked like a pair of sweet young honeymooners. Amusingly, Octavia had gone an entirely different direction, pulling back her hair into a severe knot, donning the gray dress Abby would never wear again, and borrowing a pair of my old glasses, which made Jasper look like a small boy out for tea with his stern aunt. I was confident that nobody would connect us, and though I would have felt more comfortable if we’d had any word from Bellamy or Lincoln, I thought on the whole we had done very well.

The plan was to keep all six of us rotating through the ground floor of the Plaza near the stairwell and elevator to scan the crowds for suspicious or recognizable faces. We were to stay in pairs, and switch places every hour or so to avoid sitting for too long in one spot. But it became clear to me very quickly that Abby was in no condition to keep her cover up. Being once again under the same roof as her daughter but powerless to do anything about it made her jumpy as a cat. Every time a girl with blonde hair walked into the restaurant, Abby's hand on her teacup would tremble.  She would pick up her fork and hold it in the air, forgetting about her food, staring off into space and scanning the crowd, then set the food back down untasted. 

This wasn't working.

I reached across the table and removed the teacup from her hand.  “Abby,” I said softly. “Let’s go upstairs.”

She looked at me for a long moment, and I knew she knew what I meant.

I left a message with Finn – our central conduit for delivering messages, since we could not be seen with each other – telling them that I had taken Abby upstairs to rest. Then we stepped into the elevator.

Now, my apartment's a walkup, and my office is - or was, anyway - a seedy little brick box whose elevator is barely one step above an iron cage hoisted up manually by winch, and it's been awhile since I've been inside an elevator at a fancy place like the Plaza, so I'd forgotten there's a guy in a uniform in there with you the whole time.  Which is fine, unless you've stepped into the elevator with a woman that you're about to take up to your hotel room and throw down onto the bed, and once you start thinking about that, you can't stop.  Abby stood demurely at the front of the elevator beside the porter while I stood a step behind her, nakedly staring at the way the fluttering white fabric shimmered over her hips.  I became obsessed with the curve of the back of her neck.  Just one step forward, that's all it would have taken, and she would be pressed up against me, I could palm her hips in my hand, I could bury my mouth in that soft hollow right where her white skin met her dark hair.  I felt my whole body grow hot and heavy.  I felt the air in the elevator grow thick.  Why was it so slow?  Why was it taking so long?  Why was this damn porter standing right next to Abby so I couldn't just grab her and take her right here?  The elevator crawled at an excruciating snail-like pace from floor to floor until finally it stopped at 10.  Approximately one thousand years after we had first stepped into that elevator, we arrived in the hotel room, where we began tearing frantically at each others' clothes, and I could finally, finally kiss that hollow at the back of her neck that had been driving me crazy for so long.

I knew why Abby's hands had been shaking in the restaurant downstairs, why she'd been pacing so anxiously this morning.  She was not a woman who was used to feeling powerless, and right now we had a long, slow, crawling stretch of nearly ten hours standing between us and the dock of the _Mount Weather_.  Ten hours before we could free those six hostages and then rescue her daughter.  Ten hours until she would come face to face, for the first time in two decades, with Dante Wallace. 

She needed distraction.

She could not let herself think about where Bellamy was, why he hadn't called, and if he had managed to come up with a way inside the ship.  She could not let herself think about Indra, hoping she would keep her word, hoping she was honorable, hoping the Grounders were in position where Lincoln had told us they would be. She could not let herself think about the NYPD, about their refusal to help, about their continual vague non-responses to her questions, about the catastrophic failure of the forces of law and order to do anything to protect anyone she loved, about the staggering irony of the fact that the only cops who would be there tonight to have our backs were the dirty ones - John Murphy and a handful of his friends who took bribes to do favors for Grounders.  And she could not let herself think about the sixth floor of the Plaza Hotel, where a woman in a red dress and a sniper on a fire escape and Lord knows how many other dangerous people were holding her daughter hostage.  Her daughter, who was so close that she could hear the same traffic sounds that we could and see the same view out her window, yet still so far away that she might as well have been locked up inside that ship with everybody else.

There were so many things she could not let herself think about.  She needed something else in their place.

There was so little I could do for her, so little that was within my power. But this – yes, this I could do.

The floaty white dress slipped effortlessly off her shoulders and I found her nearly naked beneath it, nothing but a filmy silk slip and a pair of gossamer white stockings.  I shed my own clothes as fast as I could, between kisses, unbuttoning my shirt as her hands moved deftly at my belt buckle.  Clothes flew everywhere.  When I was down to nothing but my boxers, I returned my attention to Abby, kneeling in front of her and slowly, slowly, rolling down first one stocking and then the other, followed by the lacy white underthings beneath her slip, running my hands over the soft downy skin of each leg and pressing kisses into the skin.  She sighed and slipped her fingers into my hair as my lips brushed over her creamy white thighs, then stepped out of the soft wisps of fabric as they pooled at her feet.

I rose back to my feet and moved around until I was behind her, kissing my way down her shoulders and back where the the snowy white silk of her slip revealed them.  Slowly, one by one, I pulled each neat little pin out of her hair, letting it tumble wildly out of its elegant knot in a dark chocolate-brown cloud of satin curls.  When the last of her hair had been freed, I buried my face in it, breathing deeply.  She smelled like Raven's eau de cologne and Octavia's lavender soap, she smelled fresh and sweet and young, and I suddenly realized I wanted to forget too, I wanted us to be just a boy and a girl who loved each other, I wanted us to be Marcus and Abby and not the mother of the missing girl and the tortured detective trying to find her.  I wanted to erase all of it.  I just wanted her.

My hands palmed her soft, heavy breasts through the silk of her slip as my hips pressed against hers and I kissed her over and over just at the spot where the back of her neck met her collarbone.  "Marcus," she murmured softly, sinking her body backwards into me, and I let one hand drift downwards, almost lazily, to stroke her between the legs through the soft fabric of her slip.  She whimpered a little at that, a soft pleading sound that set my whole body on fire.  How was I supposed to kill three or four hours if I was this close to the edge already?

She stepped away from me then, just enough to pull off her slip.  Then she kissed my mouth with a smile that was almost a dare, and seated herself on the edge of the bed with her legs parted wide.

In two strides I was there, kneeling in front of her, hands braced flat against the tops of her thighs, doing an excellent job (if I do say so myself) of distracting Abigail Griffin.

She tasted as good as she smelled, tart and sweet at the same time, and the way her whole body began to heave and writhe with every movement of my tongue began to drive me crazy.  I listened carefully to the little gasping, panting sounds she made as my lips and tongue moved on her and inside her, and I learned the spots she liked best.  (I'm a detective, remember?  They pay me to be observant.)  Long, slow caresses of the tongue got deep inhalations of breath, with her hands fisting in my hair.  Short, sharp flicks against the sensitive place right in the center earned harsh, ragged little cries.  Alternating back and forth between them kept her just barely on the other side of orgasm, bringing her to the brink over and over and then moving my mouth to a different place to begin again. 

 She moaned out my name, over and over again.  The only words she seemed capable of forming were _"Marcus"_ and _"yes."_   I drove my tongue harder and deeper and faster until she began to tremble and quake against me, and then with one tremendous gasp, her hips rising almost off the bed to meet me, she came hard against my tongue and sank back down on the bed.  I climbed up beside her and pressed a kiss on her mouth.

"No one has ever made me feel the way you make me feel," I murmured through kisses, and she ran an affectionate hand through my hair.

"Oh, Marcus," she said softly.  "You have no idea.  You have no idea what you've done to me."  And she slipped a hand down to feel how hard and hot and heavy I was, then rolled over onto her back, pulled me on top of her and guided me inside.

As amazing as she had felt that first night of hushed whispers on the war room sofa, it was a hundred times better in an expensive, soft bed, with room to spread out.  Room to take our time.  Room to lay my entire body on top of hers, pressing her tiny frame down into the impossibly soft mattress, and feel myself slide in so deep that we both gasped.  Her thighs came up around me and she wrapped me tightly, thrusting upwards to meet me as I felt her fingers dig into the flesh of my back. 

I wanted her.  I would never stop wanting her.  This feeling would never go away.  We were both powerless, at the mercy of something bigger than both of us, I could feel it in the way she held me tightly in her small strong arms and the way she never looked away from me, the way her gaze stayed locked on mine with a dizzying intensity as I began to spiral upwards and feel my own climax beginning to rise inside me. 

"Come with me," I murmured, eyes locked on hers, as I slipped my hand down and began to stroke her between thrusts, bringing her back to the brink in moments.  "Come with me."  She nodded without taking her eyes off mine and as my thrusts deepened and my hand moved I felt the force of impact hit us both together and I shook against her, clutching her body like a drowning man.

We lay still after that for a long time, breathing hard, holding each other close.  Finally, sweaty and sated, I pulled out of her, kissed her on the mouth and wrapped her in my arms. “We still have a few hours,” I said. “We should sleep. You should try to sleep.”

She nodded, a little vacantly, still dizzy from orgasm, and curled herself against me, resting her head on my chest. We slept for a little while – it can’t have been long – before I woke to realize I was alone in the bed. My heart stopped for a moment before I heard the water running in the bathroom. A few minutes later Abigail emerged, face washed, hair damp, clean and naked. I watched her through half-closed eyelids for a long moment. She pulled a comb from her bag and ran it through her wet hair, then pulled it back into a loose braid. She pulled a silky white cotton nightdress, as light as air, out of her bag and slipped it on, and I relaxed, relieved that she appeared to be preparing to get some real sleep. I started to sit up and say something, then – some teasing comment about it being too late to put clothes back on now – but stopped as I saw her do something rather strange. As she pulled the nightdress on over her head and smoothed it out, turning back towards the bed, something near the door caught her attention. The angle of the wall blocked the door from my line of sight, but when she reappeared she was holding a sheet of Plaza Hotel stationery, folded over twice, in trembling hands.  It must have been slipped under the door.

I should have said something. I don’t entirely know why I didn’t. Maybe it was the furtive way I saw her cast a look in my direction, checking to make sure I was asleep, that made me keep my eyes half lowered and play into the deception.  I kept my body still and my breathing slow and regular as I watched her unfold the note and stare at it for a long, long time, her face moving through a bewildering range of expressions.  It was fear, at first, a quick blind clench of panic, then another anxious look over towards me.  Then I saw her inhale deeply and clench her jaw, as though a decision had been made, and she folded the note back up, hastily concealing it inside the handbag she had flung haphazardly on the table.  She climbed back into bed with me, curled her body back up against mine and pressed her mouth against my shoulder.  By the time I slowly feigned waking up, rubbed my eyes and rolled over to kiss her mouth, all sign of the strange incident had vanished. 

“You all right?” I asked. She smiled at me, kissed my chest, nodded.  She looked like she was telling the truth.  It was so easy to convince myself she was telling the truth. “Are you sure?” I pressed, but gently. 

“I’m sure," she said, and anything more I might have tried to say was lost in a sharp gasp as she vanished beneath the covers and her hands found me.  Then, after a moment, her mouth did too. 

I wanted to ask her what was in that note. I wanted to ask her why we still had secrets from each other. I wanted to ask her so many things.

I wanted to.

I should have.

But her lips and teeth and tongue and hands were setting me on fire and I could hardly form conscious thoughts, let alone words.  Her mouth was hot and hungry on me, she was kissing places that had never been kissed before, and I was lost, I was gone, I couldn't fight it.  My hands tangled in her hair and my hips rose to meet her mouth as fierce heat began to swirl through my whole body.  Then she climbed back up to the head of the bed and guided me inside of her, and I forgot everything. I forgot about the note, I forgot about Clarke, Bellamy and Lincoln, I forgot about my four kids downstairs, I forgot about the girls in the boat and the Wallace Boys and everything that was going to happen in a few short hours. I forgot about everything that was not Abby Griffin’s soft moans and silky skin, the hot wetness inside of her and the way her entire body pulled me inside, the way her mouth moved against my mouth, and the way we rose to climax together, pace quickening, breath coming in ragged gasps, until finally with one final fierce thrust I burst inside her, and she followed me over the cliff shortly after with a hoarse cry of pleasure. I stayed inside her for a long moment, feeling our bodies soften and melt and grow liquid together, feeling our breath slow and still.

“I want this to be how you always remember me,” she murmured into the side of my throat, her warm breath on my ear.  "If something happens.  I want to know that you'll remember me like this."

Something in her voice made me stiffen and sit up, taking her by the shoulders and looking right into her eyes. “Abby,” I said. “What is it?”

She shook her head with a faint half-smile. “Nothing,” she said with a dismissive wave. “It’s nothing.”

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” I said, reaching up to brush a sweaty strand of hair out of her face. “Me and you, we’re going to get through this. We’re going to be okay.”  She nodded.  “Say it, Abby.”

“We’re going to be okay,” she repeated, pressing a kiss against my forehead, and she was smiling, like she meant it, but the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes.

I should have pressed harder.

I should have said, “What was that piece of paper you put in your handbag just now?”

But then she pressed her soft mouth against mine and she said, “I love you, too, Marcus Kane. I love you. I love you.” And all the things I should have said left my mind because all I could do was say it back - “I love you, Abby. I love you” – murmuring it over and over into the hollow of her throat. And then we were both ready again, and she slipped me inside of her, and this time it was slow, and sweet, and we were carried along by some force that was bigger than both of us, like we were floating on top of a tidal wave, and all we could do was whisper those same three words to each other over and over again. And when the pleasure became too great and we crested the surface of the wave and cried out and crashed down on the shore in a shaken heap of sweaty skin and thumping hearts, we lost our voices but our mouths kept moving. I fell asleep still inside her, still wrapping her tightly in my arms, my mouth kissing the words “I love you, I love you” over and over against her breast.

Deep in a heavy, sated slumber that lasted the rest of the afternoon, I didn't wake up until Jasper came to knock on our door and tell us it was time to get ready. I sat up slowly, yawned, stretched, and called out for Abby.

But there was only silence.

Abby was gone.


	19. Chapter 19

 

Clocks only tick forward.

Stories only move in one direction.

I told you, way back in the very first chapter, that we don’t always know when we’re at the beginning of a story, or even in the middle of one.  But _endings_ are different.

Endings, we understand.

And I knew, that moment when I first woke up in that hotel room bed, the blinding afternoon sunshine in which we'd fallen asleep long since faded to blue and violet outside my window, and called Abby’s name into the silence, that I was on a train speeding forward towards a cliff.  And I couldn’t slow it down or stop it, because Abigail had just cut the brakes.

I knew we were very nearly at the last chapter.

We were each of us, always, moving towards this moment of convergence, even though we never knew it.

So many people. So many lives. So many choices we did or didn’t make . . . all so that we would end up at 58th Street Pier in Manhattan at midnight on a Thursday in July in the Year of Our Lord nineteen-hundred-and-twenty-two, staring out at the vast metal bulk of the _Mount Weather,_ slicing through the dark water and carrying all our fates on board.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

**THURSDAY NIGHT: KANE**

“What the hell do you mean, she’s _gone_?” snapped Octavia, who had entered my hotel room with Jasper. She was standing in the doorway with her arms folded, watching me with cold fury in her eyes as I leaped out of bed and began to throw my clothes back on.

“I mean, she’s gone,” I fired back, hating myself a little for taking my anger out on Octavia but not quite able to help myself yet. “I woke up and she was gone.”

“You _woke up_ and –“

I could hear it in the way her voice slowly trailed off before I could see it in her eyes. She had just stepped in far enough to see the state of the bed, and Abigail’s discarded white nightdress lying on the back of a chair. She looked me up and down and saw that I was dressing in such haste that I had buttoned everything incorrectly.

“For Christ’s sake, Kane,” she said, annoyed, and began to fix my shirt. “You said you’d keep an eye on her.”

“Can we not do this right now?”

“Oh, we’re doing this now,” she said. “You had one job. You were supposed to keep the client safe.”

“Octavia –“

“What the hell has gotten into you?”

“We can have this fight later,” I said, slipping my shoes back on and heading for the door. “She’s missing. And I know exactly where she’s gone.”

I was halfway down the hall and toward the stairwell before Octavia grabbed my arm, hard, and stopped me.

“No,” she said firmly, and there was steel in her voice.

“She went after Clarke,” I said.

“You’re not going down there.”

“She’s missing.”

“So are Lincoln and my brother,” she said coldly. “Their lives could be in danger if we’re spotted. We stick to the plan. We’re going to the pier.”

“I’m sorry, Octavia,” I said, and I pulled away and bolted down the stairs. Behind me, I heard her sigh, then turn to Jasper.

“Sixth floor,” she said. “Take the elevator. Get Monty and Raven. Bring guns. _Fast_.” And then she sprinted down the stairs behind me.

In my whole life I’ve never covered ground faster than I did flying down those four flights of stairs toward the room where I imagined Abby Griffin was tied up and being held at gunpoint next to her daughter. Every cell of my body, every thought in my mind, propelled me forward with infinite speed, shouting only one thing.

_Run._

_Run._

_Run._

I could feel the train moving, I could feel the last chapter of the story coming nearer, I could feel the wheels begin to spin, and all I was doing was trying to outrun it. To get to Abigail before the story changed shape around her and something terrible happened.

And so when I arrived on the sixth floor and found Clarke and Lorelai’s rooms standing wide open, entirely deserted except for one deeply puzzled housekeeper making the beds, I crashed into the empty space where I had expected to find Abby Griffin with all the force of a brick wall.

“May I help you?” asked the housekeeper politely, staring at the rumpled man who had just sprinted into the room and the girl in the gray dress who followed him, panting and breathing heavily, just a few moments behind.

“The woman who was staying here,” I said. “Tall, dark hair . . .”

“Oh, they checked out this morning,” she said. “The lady and her aunt. They’re both gone.”

“Was there another woman with them?” I asked. “A third woman? She would have had brown hair, a few inches shorter than you –“

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see them. I just clean the rooms.”

“Finn,” said Octavia behind me quietly, and pulled me out into the hallway. “We’ll go ask Finn.”

I shook my head, too furious with myself to speak. Finn Collins would not have seen anything. Nobody would have seen anything. They had been two steps ahead of us the whole time. The six of us and a team of undercover Grounders had spent the whole day watching the Plaza Hotel, not knowing it was futile. Clarke Griffin was already gone.

Which meant Abigail was gone too.

Monty, Jasper and Raven stepped out of the elevator just then, guns discreetly concealed at the ready, and stopped short when they saw me leaning on the stairwell banister, my head in my hands.

“The rooms are empty,” said Octavia by way of explanation. “They checked out this morning.”

“Damn,” said Raven under her breath. “And no sign of Abigail?” Octavia shook her head. Raven pulled up her skirt to the thigh, slipped her gun back into the holster concealed under her dress, and walked over towards me. She put a gentle hand on my arm.

“We have to leave for the pier in an hour,” she said gently. “We can’t stay behind to search for Abigail.”

“I know,” I said, staring down the stairwell at nothing.

“Afterwards, if we don’t find her – if she’s not at the dock when we get there –“

“I know.”

“We’ll find her, Kane,” she said. I shook my head.

“No,” I said with dark finality. “Not if Dante Wallace doesn’t want us to, we won’t.”

“You think Wallace has her?” asked Monty incredulously, in a voice just slightly too loud for the hall of a hotel that had been full of Wallace Boys just hours earlier.

“Why don’t we take this out of the public stairwell,” said Octavia firmly, and led us all down a floor to Monty and Jasper’s room.

“We don’t need the sordid details,” began Raven, closing the door behind her and sitting on the side of the bed.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Although obviously we’ll want them later, you know, after this is all over, at a more convenient time –“

“Raven,” said Octavia warningly.

“Fine,” she conceded. “I’ll just have to imagine it in my head. _Anyway._ What we do need to know is how long she’s been missing, if she said anything before she left, and why you think Wallace has her.”

“There was a note,” I said. “I think it arrived under the door. It wasn’t here when we came upstairs after lunch, and I saw her reading it around maybe, I don’t know, five? Six? It was still light out, but we fell asleep between –“ I stopped hastily, but the awkwardness in the room made it clear that they knew what I meant.

“So you went up to Abby’s room after lunch, around two,” said Raven, “and then you 'fell asleep'" (with heavy sarcasm) "for a few hours, woke up, saw Abby reading a note around five or six, 'fell asleep' again, woke up at nine-fifteen when Jasper knocked, and by then she was gone.”

“Yes.”

“That’s a four-hour window, Kane, that doesn’t give us much.”

“I know.”

“She could be on Long Island by now.”

“I know.”

“What did the note say?”

“I didn’t read it.”

“What did she say when you asked her what was in it?”

Silence.

“You didn’t ask her?” Jasper interjected, puzzled, and I realized with a start that I had done it again, we had been here before, they were all looking at me with the same blank expression that Octavia and Bellamy had given me when they realized I had spent over an hour alone with Abigail Griffin at that first meeting and had never once asked her anything about her husband.

Well. That’s not quite true. They weren’t _all_ looking at me like that. Only three of them were.

Octavia could not look at me at all.

“Can you tell us _anything_ helpful?” she finally asked me in a clipped voice, busying herself with her notebook to avoid my eyes.

“It was Plaza Hotel stationery,” I said. “Slipped under the door.”

“The same trick someone used to get her to go back to her apartment and find Jacob’s body,” observed Monty.

“What could have been in that note that would make her disappear and not tell you?” asked Jasper.

“If it was an outright threat,” said Monty, “she’d have told Kane. She isn’t stupid. She would have said something.”

“Same if it was blackmail,” agreed Jasper. “Or if it was anything that would put the rest of the team in danger.”

Raven nodded. “I don’t think she would do anything to risk the mission, or anyone else’s safety,” she said. “But I think if it was for Clarke, she’d have no trouble risking herself.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I said.

“You’re all overlooking the most obvious possibility,” said Octavia, and she did finally look at me then, with something dark and angry behind her eyes, and I saw what she was going to say before she said it and went cold all over.

“Don’t, Octavia,” I cautioned her.

Raven gave her a long, searching look. “What are we missing, Octavia?” she asked, in a voice with a hint of a warning in it.

“Why have none of you asked yourselves," said Octavia without looking up from her notes, "whether it’s possible that Abigail Griffin has been working for her father all along?  She could have been lying to us from the very first moment she walked through our door.”

The silence that followed was awful.

Jasper looked at Monty. Monty looked at Jasper. Raven looked at me.

“Why don’t we give them a minute,” she said finally, dragging the boys with her out into the hallway and closing the door emphatically behind them.

Octavia and I looked at each other for a long time before she finally spoke.

“She just tells lie after lie,” she said. “I’m sorry. But you know I’m right. Think of how different this would all have been if she’d been straight with you from the beginning. About her marriage. About who she was. About Clarke’s inheritance. About whatever weird history she has with Jaha. About how the Grounders hate her. About Dante Wallace threatening her. About finding her husband’s body in her apartment. She does it again and again and again, Kane, she tells a half-truth or she leaves out a missing detail that’s the key to the whole thing and we end up chasing all over the city to find it.”

I couldn’t say anything in response to this, my jaw clenched in a combination of mortification that Octavia was right and fury at her for saying it out loud.

“All my life,” she said, her voice gentler, “you were our rock. You were the one thing that was always steady. The one thing I could always trust. I knew – we both knew – that if we fell you would catch us, every time. But I don’t know who this Marcus Kane is,” she said, hands outstretched in a gesture of resignation, and all the anger had left her voice. “From the moment she walked into our office, that woman has thrown you sideways. You’re making mistakes. You’re missing things. You’re ignoring the evidence. You're refusing to ask the obvious question because you're terrified of the answer.  That’s not _you,_ Kane,” she said, a little desperately. “I’ve known you since I was five years old.  You don’t miss things.  You don't make these kinds of mistakes.  That’s not who you are. That’s _never_ been who you are.”

“Octavia –“

“Lincoln is missing too,” she said, a quaver in her voice. “And Bellamy.”

“I know.”

“Not to mention those seven girls.”

“I know.”

“And we had a plan. A good one. A careful one. A plan _you_ came up with. And yet you could have wrecked the whole thing, gotten every single one of us killed, by charging into Clarke Griffin’s hotel room without any backup, or even a gun.”

“Octavia –“

“You could have _died_ ,” she said sharply. “You need to get yourself together.”

“I’m in love with her,” I said, staring down at the lush imported carpet of the Plaza Hotel, thinking about the room five floors up where the bedsheets were rumpled and still warm from our bodies, where Abigail’s white nightdress was tossed over the back of a chair like spilled milk, where Raven’s red dress hung in the closet waiting for a woman who might never wear it.

“I know you are,” sighed Octavia, and all the anger in her voice softened, became sad resignation. “I knew before you did.”

“I don’t know what to do next,” I said. “I don’t know what happens now.”

“We stick to the plan,” she said. “That’s the only thing we can do. Abigail’s isn’t the only life at stake here. So you’re going to get up, and you’re going to go upstairs, and you’re going to splash some cold water on your face and change your clothes, and in twenty minutes we’re leaving for 58th Street Pier and we’re just going to pray to God that Abigail is there too.”

I nodded and stood up to go, then stopped at the door and turned back to look at her.

“She’s not what you think she is, Octavia,” I said. “Whatever you’re thinking. She’s not that person.”

Octavia regarded me steadily.

“Has she ever told you anything about herself,” she said reasonably, “that you absolutely one hundred percent knew was true?”

I was silent.

_“How on earth was I supposed to keep my heart safe after that?”_

_You wanted to rescue me, Marcus, and you did.”_

_“You knew what I wanted the first moment I saw you.”_

_“You have no idea what you've done to me."_

_“I love you too, Marcus. I love you. I love you.”_

Tangled limbs, sweaty skin, white sheets, hungry mouths and hands. The way her body arched up to meet mine, the way her eyes opened wide and her lips parted in a soft O as her breath grew rapid and shallow, the way she held me tightly against her on the war room couch that first night, clutching me with the determined ferocity of someone who has learned through hard experience that anyone you love might one day get up in the night and leave you.

But I said none of this to Octavia.

All I said to her was:

“I don’t know.”

 * * *

 _Please, please, please,_ I begged whatever god might be listening as Raven sped us along the hot summer streets of New York City towards 58 th Street and the docks beyond it. _Please let her be there. Please let her be alive._

But God and I and the streets of New York City all knew how very unlikely that was.

Abigail Griffin had gotten a note and run off in search of her daughter. That much I knew. Octavia’s fears weren’t unreasonable, but she didn’t know Abigail the way I did.

_The way I hoped I did._

I shook the thoughts out of my head.

I’d been wrong before.

I had seen the blood on her hands, and the crazed hysteric look in her eyes, when I knelt down beside her on the floor of my bedroom, and I had leaped to entirely the wrong conclusion. I had followed my eyes and not my heart.

She loved me. She had said it – with both her words and her body – and she had meant it. I was hers and she was mine. That, I knew, was real.

That got me no closer to knowing where she was – no closer to an answer – but it eased the darkest of my fears.

If you want to know how far gone I was, there’s your answer. Lives on the line, and all I could think about was whether Abby Griffin was lying when she said she loved me.

The small voice in the back of my head trying to get my attention whispered that maybe I was _trying_ to think about Abby, _trying_ to keep her at the forefront of my mind, because turning her words over and over to parse them for meaning was easier than accepting the fact that I might have gotten Bellamy killed.

And if anything happened to Bellamy –

I couldn’t think about that right now. I couldn’t think about Abby, or Bellamy, or Lincoln, or even Clarke.

We were here with one job – to rescue those six girls trapped in the cargo hold of the _Mount Weather_. Everything else would have to wait.

Raven pulled up behind a deserted old warehouse a few blocks from the pier at exactly 11:00 p.m. We would walk the rest of the way. Guns at the ready, clad head-to-toe in black with quiet-moving shoes, we slipped carefully between buildings towards Dock Seven, where the _Mount Weather_ was scheduled to be sailing into port in an hour.

“Are the Grounders in position?” murmured Monty behind me.

“There’s no way to know,” said Raven. “They’re all hidden. They’re staying in place until it’s time.”

“They’ll be there,” said Octavia, with more confidence than she felt. “Indra won’t let us down.”

We came around a blind corner and found ourselves face-to-face with Dock Seven – and with the first hitch in our plans.

The _Mount Weather_ was already there.

“What the hell,” whispered Jasper. “It’s not scheduled to dock for another hour.”

“I have a bad feeling about this,” I said under my breath, and felt the others cluster closer around me. Octavia impulsively took my hand.

“Maybe the want ad got the time wrong,” said Monty hopefully. “Maybe the ship made better time than they predicted.” I shook my head.

“No,” I said slowly. “I don’t think so.”

“It’s a trap,” said Raven sharply, pulling me back. “We have to get out of here before the Wallace Boys show up.”

Octavia shook her head.

“It’s too late,” she whispered. “It’s too late. _They’re already here.”_

I felt them before I saw them, melting out of the shadows, a ring of dark figures surrounding us from all sides. I hoped to God that one of them was Bellamy, but couldn’t be sure.

And that was when the penny dropped.

_Bellamy._

Bellamy, answering an ad we’d found by the most coincidental of circumstances in the most unlikely of places.

Bellamy, walking confidently into the lion’s den, based on a clue that had dropped into our laps like magic.

Like sleight-of-hand.

Again.

We had always been meant to find that red sports car, with the scrap of paper on the floor of it.

We had always been meant to track down the _Mount Weather._

We had always been meant to arrive here, at this time and this place.

This was where the story was always meant to end.

And that was when I heard the gunfire behind us.  “If you’re waiting for your Grounder friends,” said a voice stepping out of the shadows and slowly reshaping itself to become a sharp-faced man all in black, aiming a tommy gun at the whole lot of us, “our boys will be keeping them busy for awhile.”

 _Indra,_ I thought helplessly, and I must have said it out loud, because the man laughed.

“Is _that_ who’s behind this,” he said. “I wondered. I always thought she was smarter than that. Too smart to get involved with people like you.” He waved the gun towards the wooden pier that sloped forever downwards toward the dark water where the _Mount Weather_ sat waiting.

“Walk,” he ordered us, as even more shadowy shapes around us resolved themselves into armed men.

So we walked.

They led us up the gangplank and onto the ship.  “There’s someone up there,” whispered Jasper behind me, pointing to the shadowy upper deck as we approached the boat, but was prodded into silence by the gun at his back.

Monty was last in line. The second his feet touched the deck, we heard a low roar and felt a curious sensation of movement.

We all looked around at each other in horror.

_The boat was moving._

We were so startled that we all stood there with blank expressions on our faces as the guards encircled us. I watched over the head guard’s shoulder as the boat and the pier separated themselves from each other. We could still hear the Grounders and the Wallace Boys shooting at each other, we could see the flash of bullets all over the pier and the dock and up by the warehouses, but we could not see Indra, or how many of the people we had unknowingly sent into danger were still alive.

I watched the guns fire left and right, feeling strangely numb and deadened to it. There they were, off in the distance, bodies firing bullets and bodies receiving them, standing bodies and falling bodies, but I felt curiously distant from it all. We were unmoored, now, we were untethered to them, we were no longer of the same world. Indra had kept her word. She had done everything right. It was not her fault that we had all been led into a trap. It was not her fault that I had failed to see the truth when it was right in front of me.

It was not her fault that we had walked obediently down the straight path the Wallace Boys had laid out for us – a path which was always meant to end at this exact time and place, at Dock Seven of the 58th Street Pier at midnight, where everyone in the world that I had ever cared about found themselves at the mercy of a mob of dark-clad men with big dark guns.

The Grounders were not coming for us. There was no one left.

We were alone on the _Mount Weather_ with the Wallace Boys.

No, I amended as the guards prodded us up the narrow stairs from the lower deck to the upper. Not entirely alone. Jasper had been right.

The upper deck was a wide open space with a low metal rail and a big metal door at one end leading to the heart of the ship. The orange light from the pier lit up one end of the deck as though it were high noon, but left the far recesses, around the door, in shadow.

And there, bathed in golden light and tied by the wrists to the low metal railing, was Abby.

I was so relieved she wasn’t dead that it came out furious, and I had run almost all the way over to her before one of the uniformed men grabbed me roughly from behind by both arms and halted me.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I yelled at her, my voice broken and rough. “Why didn’t you tell me where you were going?”

“I’m so sorry,” she said, but that wasn’t an answer.

“What was in the note?” I said, and she froze.

“You were awake?” she asked, a little faintly. “You saw that?”

“You _lied_ to me.”

“No,” she said. “There were just . . . things I never said. That’s different.”

“Is it?”

“Kane, go easy,” said Raven behind me.

“Marcus, baby, I need you to listen to me,” she said, and her face was drawn and anxious.  She looked tightly-wound with fury and desperate fear. “I don’t want anybody to get hurt.”

“Did you know?” I asked. “Did you know this was a trap?  Did you lead us here deliberately?"

She looked at me squarely in the eye.

"What an ugly thing to say," she said, and instantly I knew.  Octavia had been wrong.  I had been right.

“Well, now you’ve stepped in it,” muttered Monty behind me.

"No," I said.  "No, you didn't know.  You lied about the note to keep us all safe.  You were told to come alone, so you came alone.  It was a hostage exchange, wasn't it?  Your life for Clarke's."  She looked away.  "And you couldn't tell me," I went on more gently, "because you knew I'd try to stop you."

"She's my daughter," said Abby.  "I am never going to stop doing whatever it takes to save those kids.  My kid."

"There has to be another way," I said, reaching out for her hand.  "We'll find another way."

"No," she said softly.  "No, Marcus.  You won't."

“She’s right,” said a voice from the shadows, and a handsome man in an elegant gray suit, a few years younger than me with the same wavy, amber-brown hair as Abigail Griffin, stepped out of the shadows, a beautiful dark-haired woman at his side. “When it became clear that the girl didn’t know anything, and that Mrs. Griffin had somehow found herself a whole litter of armed lapdogs, we decided we’d all be better off with a trade. We promised to let Clarke go if Mrs. Griffin came quietly and wasn’t followed. We knew she was in that hotel room,” he said, shooting her a sidelong glance, “but we didn’t know she had a gentleman caller in there with her.” He gave a low, approving whistle. “She stashed the note, seduced you, and then snuck out while you were sleeping off a good fuck,” he said with a grin. “You can take the girl out of the Wallace gang, but you can’t take the Wallace –“

I couldn’t help myself. My punching fist had a mind of its own. And it felt really, really damn good to hit Cage Wallace. So good I almost didn’t mind when, in retaliation, two of his goons grabbed me by the arm so I couldn’t move and he gave me three vicious jabs to the solar plexus. I doubled over in pain, stars spinning before my eyes.

“Call Emerson,” he said over his shoulder to Lorelai, who nodded and sauntered off into the shadows towards the door. “Tell him to bring rope.”

Raven started forward at this, and Cage’s gun swung over to point straight at her heart. “I really wouldn’t,” he said. “It’s cute that you think I won’t shoot you, but I’d encourage you not to try it.” He gestured over at me. “Look at this guy,” he said. “He’s half-crazy with panic right now. Every time you make me point my gun at one of you, he just gets worse. Why don’t you give the guy a break and just stay right where you are.”

The man named Emerson approached just then, hauling an armload of rope, and one by one, he and Lorelai knotted our hands to the metal rail on the side of the ship next to Abby. Me, then Raven, then Octavia, then Jasper, then Monty. Cage held his gun lightly, almost casually, but every time one of us so much as flinched, it would swing over towards us and aim for our hearts.

We were trapped.

“Which one is the detective?” asked Cage suddenly, looking over at me. “It must be you.” I looked him straight in the eye but said nothing. “Not much of one,” Cage snorted dismissively, with a dry snide little smile that twisted my heart in my chest because it was so hauntingly like his sister’s.

Then I realized he might have just handed me an opening.

In books, villains always like to be clever. They always like to boast about how much smarter they’ve been than you, always want to deliver a grand monologue about their awe-inspiring villainy. I wondered if Bellamy had made it on board the ship.  I wondered where Lincoln was, and if I could buy the two of them some time. I wondered if letting Cage make me feel stupid for a few minutes would distract him enough that rescue might come.

So I tried to sound nonchalant. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” I said to him casually. “Up until I got my hands tied to the deck of a cargo ship, I’d say we didn’t do too badly. We figured you out, after all. We figured out everything. The Griffin Railways takeover and the girls down below and what really happened to Jacob.”

Cage arched an eyebrow.

“I can’t believe you’re still this oblivious,” he said, wonderment in his eyes. “I really can’t. Not after you missed the most obvious thing, staring you straight in the face.”

I didn’t take the bait right away, and I could see him twisting and turning a little. I could see how badly he wanted to tell me how stupid I’d been.

And, most importantly, I could see a shape moving in the shadows on the other side of the deck – a tall male shadow that might, just might, be Bellamy.

“Is that so?” I said. “What’s the big obvious thing I missed?”

He laughed, and that was the first moment that I realized this wasn’t quite going how I had expected. Cage Wallace wasn’t just strutting; he had something he _wanted_ me to know, something he wanted to watch my face when he told me, which meant it couldn’t be anything good. I felt a small prickle of fear at the back of my neck.

“You never asked yourself the one really important question,” he said. “Who is the person that Abigail Griffin hates most in the whole world?”

I froze. I turned to Abby beside me and saw tears in her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry, Marcus. I wanted to tell you.”

In that moment, as fragments of words and images began to fight for space inside my brain, I felt the gears slowly turn until they clicked together.

And then I knew.

I wasn’t as sharp as maybe I would have wanted to be – as sharp as I might have been if the woman in question had been a different woman, instead of this one who turned me sideways and made me dizzy and left me unable to think – but in that moment I also wasn’t quite as dumb as Cage Wallace thought that I was. Because as that dark shape at the far end of the dock – the shape that was not Bellamy – slowly moved closer and emerged from the shadows, I put the pieces together quickly enough that I was able to look him dead in the eye and greet him by name before the orange sodium light of the pier even touched his face.


	20. Chapter 20

** **

**THURSDAY, MIDNIGHT: KANE**

It was like flipping through a scrapbook. Just flashes, here and there.

A shadow lurking in the street outside my office window the night I first met Abigail Griffin. Clarke and Abby at dinner in the Plaza, arguing about a boy. Bellamy asking how it was possible that neither he nor I – both ex-cops – had ever even heard of Dante Wallace. A knife through Abby's heart pinned to the desk of my smashed-up office, trying to discourage (or threaten?) me away from the case. Photos of men from Jacob Griffin’s past, held up in front of Clarke as she was interrogated in that hotel room. A peculiarly intense shouting match in an office. An investigation that went nowhere. Bellamy's probation. A cover-up carefully crafted to point a finger at an innocent woman, with the full force of the NYPD behind it.  Abigail's wild, panicky voice - _“He’s going to see me hanged for this.”_

_Who did Abigail Griffin hate most in the world?_

She was _afraid_ of her father and her brother, I suddenly realized.  She had spoken of Dante Wallace with terror and anger, but that was different.  No, there was someone else, someone who had been there all along, hidden in plain sight right in front of me.  Someone whose name Abigail Griffin had never spoken in my presence without loathing.  Someone she had said her husband used to know.  Someone who she despised so bitterly that she had forbidden Clarke to spend time with his son.

Someone who had accused her of a murder she didn't commit, and called down a citywide manhunt on her head to frame her for it.

“Hello, Thelonious,” I said in a calm voice as the Police Superintendent for the City of New York stepped out of the shadows.

**ONE NIGHT EARLIER: BELLAMY**

“Well, if it isn’t my old friend Lincoln,” said a sardonic voice from the shadows as the warehouse door clanged shut behind us, and from the way Lincoln stiffened at my side I knew it was one he recognized. And not pleasantly.  "You missed me, didn't you?  I'm touched.  I'm really touched."

“Cage,” Lincoln greeted him coldly as a man stepped out of the shadows, and I flinched. This was Mrs. Griffin’s brother. This was the bloodthirsty heir to the Griffin Boys’ empire.

He didn’t _look_ terrifying. He looked like a low-level creep, to be honest with you, like the kind of guy you’d tell your sister not to dance with at the nightclub because he was just a little too polished, a little too smooth, with that expensive suit and perfect hair.  But he didn’t look like a guy who would shoot his brother-in-law in cold blood and leave the corpse for his own sister to find.

That was how I knew that he was very dangerous indeed.

Kane taught me that. The people who _look_ threatening are never the ones you really need to be afraid of. It’s always the quiet ones, the well-dressed ones, the civilized-looking ones, the ones whose hands look like they’ve never touched blood.  If you looked at Cage and Lincoln side-by-side, and I asked you which one was the violent murderer, you'd pick the wrong guy every time.

The first time I ever laid eyes on Cage Wallace I knew he was the most dangerous man I had ever met. Nothing that happened afterwards contradicted that first impression.

“I apologize for the location,” he said, gesturing with some distaste to our surroundings. “But when I saw that we had a job application from a cop, I just had to meet with you in person.”

I froze.

_How the hell did he know?_

“I’m not against it on principle,” he went on. “We can always use more cops. But I wasn’t willing to run the risk of letting you get too close before I decided if I could trust you.” He folded his arms and examined me carefully. “You can put the gun down, by the way,” he said. “Lincoln’s not going anywhere. In fact, why don’t you set that gun on the ground – slowly – that’s it – now kick it away from you. No sudden moves, please. I assure you, we’re not as alone in here as we look and I’d hate to make a scene.” I did as he asked. “Thank you,” he nodded at me. “Now we can talk. What the hell are you doing here?”

“I’m here about the Mount Weather job,” I answered as calmly as I could, trying to keep my voice steady. Trying not to sound like a cop. “I want in.”

“You want in,” he repeated dubiously. “You’re an NYPD lieutenant, Mr. Blake. You _have_ a job. And yes,” he cut me off before I could protest, “of course I know who you really are. Give us a little credit, please. Lorelai ran background checks on everyone. You’re a cop with Grounder ties. My father wanted us to throw out your letter and ignore it. Lorelai wanted me to shoot you in the head and prevent any trouble. I might still do that. We’ll see. But I have to admit, I was intrigued. I wanted to see what you’d do when you walked in the door.” He smiled at Lincoln. “You’re smart enough that you figured out you were on Wallace turf, doing a Wallace job,” he said, “so you showed up with a captured Grounder. That’s bold. That’s a good opening move. I was hoping for something of the kind. You’ve impressed me so far,” he admitted, his tone pleasant and conversational like we were just shooting the breeze over a couple of cold beers. “This fellow here is a tough one to track down. There were rumors he’d gone straight a few years back, but I never believed them. Not Lincoln. Not the king of the New York opium trade. Not my favorite little drug addict,” he said, in an almost affectionate tone, and it sent a shiver down my spine. There was something a little unhinged about him and I began to feel claustrophobic in his presence, like I was trapped underground and the walls were closing in.

“You two know each other?” I asked, trying to keep the baffled quaver out of my voice, trying to sound as relaxed and at ease as Cage Wallace. Trying not to sound like a cop fishing for intel. Trying to sound like this was just another day for Bellamy Blake, murderous thug and future _Mount Weather_ cargo shipment security guard.

“He didn’t tell you?” Cage sounded almost disappointed. “Now, that’s unfortunate. You brought this guy all the way down here as collateral and you guys didn’t even talk about me? Lincoln. Buddy. After all we’ve been through?”

I ventured a look over at Lincoln, and almost immediately wished I hadn’t. He was stock-still, staring straight ahead at some point on the back wall, over Cage’s shoulder. He was looking at nothing. His jaw was clenching and unclenching, his fists were balled up at his side, and there was something wild and terrifying and almost feral trapped behind his eyes. _Cage Wallace did something to you,_ I whispered to him in my mind. _What was it? What happened to you here?_

I was almost certain I didn’t want to know.  Lincoln knew Cage well enough to be confident I’d get a fair hearing if I walked in here with him at gunpoint.  Which meant Cage wanted Lincoln captured or dead, and Lincoln knew it.

 _How the hell was I going to get Lincoln out of this?_ I thought frantically.  _What in the name of God was he thinking?_

“We didn’t have much of a stake in the opium business, at first,” began Cage. “My father wasn’t interested in the drug trade. He thought it was sordid. Me, I’m a businessman. Where my father saw tasteless squalor, I saw _possibility._ The Grounders were our only real competition in the field, and. Well. No offense to this guy, but the guys who had his job before him weren’t real impressive. And so we decided to try a, let’s just say, a targeted experiment. To see if we could build a market for our own product and claim a little Grounder territory.”

“What does that mean,” I asked apprehensively, “a ‘targeted experiment?’”

“It means,” intoned Lincoln in a dull, flat voice, not looking at either of us, “that the Wallace Boys laced a Grounder shipment of opium from China with a highly addictive and semi-toxic additive that made opium addicts crave it violently.”

“We tracked the results,” continued Cage, as though he and Lincoln were telling me this story together, “and followed the sales to locate the customers themselves. The idea, see, was to approach them directly, with our stuff, and eventually they’d abandon the Grounder-run opium dens altogether and buy everything from us. Not a successful experiment, unfortunately.”

“Four hundred and seventy-nine people died,” murmured Lincoln, still not able to look at us. “A hundred and twelve of them were Grounders. Most of them overdosed, because their addiction to the Wallace opium was so heightened that they were incapable of moderating themselves. Some had a fatal reaction to whatever the Wallace Boys laced the opium with. We never learned what it was.”

“Trade secret,” said Cage pleasantly.

“And sixty-eight,” hissed Lincoln, the shadows inside his eyes darkening yet further, “committed suicide, after the last of the shipment had been sold and there was no more left. Dozens of others murdered each other for it. Four hundred and seventy-nine deaths in a six month period.  Just for the sake of a profit experiment.”

“Nearly four hundred and eighty,” corrected Cage. “If you hadn’t managed to find a way to kick the stuff on your own. You were one of the very few who did. Impressive.” Lincoln didn’t respond. “You have a _remarkable_ constitution,” Cage went on thoughtfully. “Nobody else responded to that particular strain like you did. And frankly, your timing showing up here couldn’t be better. Lorelai’s been tinkering, and she thinks she’s repaired the glitch in that last batch from a few years ago. She’s ready to try again. We think this time we can gain a real foothold in the Grounder opium market. The stuff’s just as addictive but a bit of a slower burn. She’s been looking for someone to test it.” He turned to me. “Up to you, kid,” he said. “How bad do you want this job?”

I looked at Lincoln.

Lincoln looked at me.

 _Damn you,_ _Lincoln,_ I thought to myself desperately. _You knew._

Lincoln had put on his Grounder coat and marched into that warehouse in front of my gun knowing he’d never walk out of there. Knowing his life was the cost of getting me onto the flash team so I could take out the Wallaces and save all those girls. Knowing that, after spending months or maybe years of his life forcing all the poisoned Wallace opium out of his system, trapped inside the prison of addiction, he was voluntarily submitting himself to it all over again.

 _“Octavia doesn’t know that it will be all of us next,”_ he had warned me as we walked through that door.

If I didn’t get onto the flash team, the Wallaces would come after all of us, and Lincoln knew it. Not just him and me, but Kane and Mrs. Griffin and Raven and Jasper and Monty and Indra.

And Octavia.

And so he knew – and I knew – that I had to let him do it.

Even if my sister would never forgive me.

“I want the job,” I said boldly to Cage, with more confidence than I felt. “I brought you Lincoln. I earned a spot on the team.”

Cage looked me up and down, appraising me for a long moment. “It’s not that I don’t trust you,” he said finally. “Let’s just say I need a tiny bit more convincing.” He gave a low whistle and two men in uniforms emerged, as if by magic, from the shadowy corners of the warehouse, taking Lincoln by the arms and holding him captive. Lincoln bowed his head and did not resist as Cage Wallace reared back and hit him in the stomach so hard that I felt a visceral pain of empathy in my own gut at the horrible, sick, smacking sound of it. Lincoln doubled over, but did not cry out. I bit my lip and kept my face expressionless as Cage looked over at me, watching.

“Are you friends with this guy?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. “Is that how you knew where to find him?”

Lincoln looked up at me and I could read the thought in his mind as clearly as if it were written in black letters across his skin.

_Don’t mention Octavia._

_Don’t say anything about Octavia._

“Acquaintances,” I said after a brief hesitation. “We’ve run into each other once or twice at Indra’s Speakeasy.” Lincoln gave just the faintest of nods and I knew I’d given the right answer.

“Good, then,” said Cage. “You can take over.”

I stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“You want in or not, kid?” he asked. “You want to be a Wallace? Be a fucking Wallace.”

“I thought I was just signing up for a one-night gig,” I said, in some confusion. “For the extra cash. I thought this was a flash team.”

He shook his head.

“The flash team gig is just the beginning,” he said. “Rite of initiation, you could say. No, kid, you showed up here with a Grounder prisoner in tow, you got my attention, so show me what you can do.” And he stepped away from Lincoln, gesturing towards his chest with a rather theatrical flourish.

“Don’t go too crazy,” he said, “Lorelai wants him in good shape when she starts running tests on the new opium shipment tomorrow.”

I looked up into Lincoln’s eyes, and saw resignation, forgiveness, and permission. _I’m sorry,_ I whispered to him silently, both to Octavia and to him. _I'm so sorry._

And I closed my eyes as my fist collided with his chest.

 

**THURSDAY, MIDNIGHT: KANE**

"Marcus Kane," he said, with a dry sneer.  "Will you ever get tired of rescuing stray puppies?"

“That’s right,” said Cage, looking from Jaha to me. “I forgot. You two have a history.”

“I’ll say we do,” I agreed, trying very hard to keep my voice and eyes steady as Thelonious, gun drawn, walked out of the shadows and stood beside Cage.  "He fired me."

"You had it coming."

"Or you had it in for me."

He shrugged, conceding the point, then looked down the row of hostages tied up next to me and, infuriatingly, _laughed._ "Oh, this is rich," he chuckled.  "Look at you.  Marching into Wallace territory surrounded by an army of baby ducklings.  Which one's the little girl who killed a man and sent her mother to jail for it?"  He looked closely at first Raven, then Octavia.  "Must have been you," he said.  "You look a little familiar.  Stabbed a man in the chest, let your mother take the fall and got away clean.  Where's the justice in that?"

"Your fight's not with Octavia," I interrupted him.  "It's with me.  Leave her alone."

"Oh goodness, how terrifying," Cage drawled.  "Marcus Kane the noble detective, with his army of kids and women.  I'm shaking."

If looks could kill, the heat blazing out of Raven Reyes' eyes at that remark would have incinerated Cage and Jaha right where they stood.  Octavia and Abby weren't far behind.  _Put some knives in their hands and I'll show you what these kids and women can do,_ I thought but refrained from saying.

"So it was you all along," I said to Thelonious, the pieces of the puzzle beginning to slide smoothly into place.  “I should have known you were too righteous to be true.  You built your whole career on being the guy who cleaned up New York City.  You were the force of law and order.  But all that time, you weren’t really stopping crime. You were just _hunting Grounders_. As a favor to this guy, I assume.  And you were covering up every crime the Wallace Boys had their hands on. Grounders would get twenty years on a minor liquor bust, but Abigail couldn’t even get you to _pretend_ to look for her missing daughter, or track down Jacob’s real killer. Because you knew the Wallace Boys were the ones that wanted them dead. So instead, you framed Abigail.”

Cage rolled his eyes.  “Really,” he said. “You think it was my idea to murder my own brother-in-law? We just wanted the company, Mr. Kane. We're not _animals._   We were perfectly willing to take it the easy way. Wait for Clarke Griffin to come of age, track her down, rough her up a little, and get her to sign over the shares. We wouldn’t have killed her. We might even have left her the rest of the cash. As a favor. Because, you know. We’re family.”  He stepped in closer to Abigail and ran a finger down the side of her cheek. She flinched like his touch had burned her. I surged forward, pulling desperately at the ropes around my wrist, but to no avail.  “No,” he went on, almost absently, “Jacob Griffin wasn’t our idea. We were hired to take care of it, and we did, I like to think, our usual thorough job, but we were just the hired guns. We weren’t the ones with the plan. Not this time. We just carried it out.” He looked over at Jaha, then back at Abby. "You should have stuck with us, sis," he said.  "But you landed on the wrong side of this thing, and now you're going to pay."

“What is he talking about?” I murmured to Abby, who still wouldn’t look at me. Her eyes were fixed on Thelonious Jaha.

“It was about power,” she said. “It was always about power. He was never going to stay a police superintendent his whole life. No, he struck a deal with the devil and joined forces with my father and brother.  And Jacob knew," she said, looking him dead in the eyes. “Jacob knew you were dirty. He knew you did jobs for pay for the Wallace Boys, that you had your hands in organized crime all over the city. And then when he found out about your plan, he threatened to go to the _New York Times_ and tell them everything."

“What plan?” I asked, my heart in my throat, and Abigail turned to look at me then.

"The thing Thelonious Jaha wanted all along," she said.  "Griffin Railways was just a means to an end.  It was the price for a favor.  Jaha hired the Wallace Boys to make all three Griffins disappear, so that nobody would reveal his secret. So that nobody would ever know he was a slimy, deceitful, corrupt sack of shit come November - _when he runs for mayor of New York City._ ”

_Click._

There it was. The missing piece.

The Queen of Hearts had finally revealed itself. 

The misdirect and distractions and sleight-of-hand were the Wallace Boys, but the cool logical brain behind the entire thing was Thelonious Jaha, who pursued power with a near-religious fervor and had used the Wallace Boys as a stepping stone to achieve it.  He had kept his hands clean by shopping out this murder-for-hire to them, as he had shopped out dirty favors to them over and over in the past – in exchange for which he kept them off the police books entirely. They sailed a ship back and forth around the country, collecting shareholders, so that they could take over the company after killing off all the heirs, and nobody in those cities had ever investigated because Jaha had connections everywhere.

If we hadn’t stepped in, what would be the result? Wallace with infinite wealth, Jaha in political office, and an unholy marriage between them that would poison the city with corruption from top to bottom.

Jaha wasn’t just trading favors with Dante Wallace. _He was buying an election._

At the cost of Jacob, Clarke and Abigail Griffin’s lives.

"But you guessed wrong," said Abigail, her voice vibrant and unbroken, and my God, I loved her in that moment, I couldn’t help it, even with my wrists scraped raw with splintery old rope tied up next to her and the fear of imminent death hanging over our heads, even with those kids I looked on as practically my own tied up beside me, endangered because of my own folly and blindness, even with no idea what on earth had become of Lincoln and Bellamy or if we would ever get out of there alive – still, all I could feel in that moment was desperate, wild love for Abigail Griffin. She stood straight and steady, her dark hair flying in the wind like a ship’s sail, lit up by the orange-gold lamps at the edge of the pier, her eyes piercing straight into his.  "You had to kill two of us and leave the third alive, with blood on their hands, to take the fall.  To keep your own hands clean.  If all three of us died, someone would look around for the real killer.  You had to shoot two, and let the third one hang for it.  You killed Jacob, because you knew he was onto you.  And then you went after Clarke next.  But _you picked the wrong Griffin_ ," she said, and there was triumph in her voice.  "It wasn't Clarke.  Jacob didn't tell her any of it.  _I_ was the one that knew.  _I_ was the one that Jacob gave the evidence to.  I was the one he told.  And he told me _everything,_ Thelonious," she added in a malicious whisper, and I could see that Jaha was ever so faintly rattled by her refusal to cower in front of him.  He was wondering whether he'd made a mistake.  "I know every dirty little secret in your whole career.  I know about every backdoor deal and falsely-arrested Grounder, about every political bribe and corrupt cop on your force.  I know all of it.  Jacob gave the file to me.  Not to our daughter.  _You guessed wrong._ You were so pleased at the chance to watch me suffer - to frame me for two murders and watch me hang for it - that you gambled on Clarke, and you lost.” She leaned in close to him, wrists straining at the rope behind her. “It was me all along,” she said. “ _I_ was the one. Clarke didn’t know.”

“Yes, I did,” a clear young voice rang out from the far side of the dock.

Suddenly there was movement in the shadows, and a beautiful blonde-haired girl, wearing a somewhat-the-worse-for-wear beaded Parisian evening dress, stepped into the light.

She was holding a gun, aimed at the head of Dante Wallace.

“Let them go,” she said, “or your father dies.”


	21. Chapter 21

** **

 

**THURSDAY NIGHT, 9 P.M.: BELLAMY**

_Don’t think about Lincoln_ , I thought to myself as Emerson handed me my kit – a guard uniform with a hat whose brim shadowed my face, a tommy gun and a large pack of bullets. _Don’t think about Lincoln. Don’t think about Lincoln._

For nearly twenty-four hours, since Cage Wallace had stood by and forced me to beat my friend to within an inch of his life, coming close to shattering two of his ribs, and then had his men drag Lincoln off behind a closed door in the warehouse, that had been the thought pounding in my head over and over again like a booming bass drum. I didn’t know what had become of him after that. I didn’t know where they’d taken him or if I’d ever see him again. He had very possibly signed his own death warrant to get me onto this team and if I screwed up now, everything was lost.

Which meant I couldn't afford to screw up.

Which meant I couldn't afford to think right now about Lincoln, or where he was, or what they were doing to him.

I took the gun from Emerson and put on the jacket and hat.  “Blake, right?” he said to me. I nodded. “Yeah, Wallace has you with Lovejoy down at the bottom of the pier.”

“On the pier?” I repeated, a little blankly.

“Yeah.”

“I thought we were on the ship,” I said, trying to sound casual and not panicked. _How the hell was I supposed to get close enough to kill Dante Wallace if I was stuck down on the pier?_

“Some on the ship, some hauling cargo, some keeping watch on the pier,” he shrugged. “You got a problem with your assignment?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. Go find Lovejoy and get to your post. Ship comes in at ten.”

I froze.

“The newspaper advertisement said midnight,” I said, and something in that made Emerson look at me kind of funny.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Ten o’clock. It was always scheduled for ten o’clock. You must’ve read it wrong.”

And that was when I knew.

I hadn't read it wrong.  I had seen exactly what I was meant to see.

 _We were_ supposed _to find that car,_ I thought, furious with myself for not seeing it, feeling the sting of angry tears prickle the back of my eyes. _We were_ supposed _to find that torn-up piece of paper._ They _wanted_ whoever was searching for Clarke Griffin to show themselves.

They had laid a careful, meticulous trap, and Kane was about to march our whole team right into it. 

I had just handed every person in the world I cared about over to the Wallace Boys.

And - worst of all - I didn't know whether I was in the trap already, or safe outside it.  Was there anything I could do to help, or was I trapped inside with the rest of my family?  Did Wallace know about me? Had Lincoln bought me enough goodwill to get a free pass? Or was I about to get killed too?

_Don’t think about Lincoln._

I followed the direction Emerson had pointed me and walked down the long wooden gangplank to the end of the pier where a man wearing a jacket just like mine, whose nametag read LOVEJOY, was standing with his gun at the ready.

“You Blake?” he called up at me.

“Yeah.”

“You’re with me, kid. We’re patrolling for Grounders. Keep that gangplank clear until the cargo’s all been unloaded and hauled up to the trucks. Got it?”

“Got it,” I said.

“Good,” said Lovejoy. “Here comes the ship.”

I turned over my shoulder and saw the vast gray bulk of the U.S.S. _Mount Weather_ gliding slowly towards us, and I felt a cold clench of fear I couldn’t explain. There was something about the way that big dark shape sliced silently through the black water that felt like I was in a nightmare.

_Don’t think about Lincoln._

I took up my post at the very edge of the pier, Lovejoy off somewhere over my left shoulder doing the same, and watched the ship sail towards us. Everything was silent for a long time. I wondered if the Grounders were in position, if Indra had come through. I wondered if they would spot the ship docking two hours early and find a way to warn Kane.

_Don’t think about Kane._

_Don’t think about Octavia._

_Don’t think about –_

A sudden noise behind me made my stomach drop, and I turned around just in time to hear a heavy dull thud as a body hit the wood of the pier.

I stared down in utter bafflement at the sight of Lovejoy, now collapsed in a heap at my feet, blood slowly pooling out from around the wicked little switchblade now stuck in the back of his dark jacket and running in little rivulets through the wooden planks into the black water.

That was the first thing I saw.

The second thing I saw was that Lovejoy had been holding a gun in his hand.

The third thing I saw was a dark hooded shape, crouching in the shadow of the dock pylons.  I recoiled, reaching for my own gun.

“He was going to shoot you,” said a voice I recognized, startling me, and my hand stopped halfway to my holster as the dark hooded shape stood up, stepped into the light, and became Clarke Griffin.

"Clarke," I said, a little stupidly, my brain swirling.

"Bellamy."

“You’re not dead,” I said, somewhat unnecessarily, and then I astonished us both by stepping forward in two long strides, pulling her into my arms and kissing her.

After an initial moment of confusion and surprise, I could feel her smile against my mouth and then her lips parted and her arms slipped around me, one at my waist and one at the nape of my neck, and she was suddenly kissing me back, warm and soft and sweet and magnificently _alive_ , Clarke Griffin was _alive_ , if I had failed everyone else in the world that I cared about I had at least not failed in this one thing, because somehow, against all probability, Clarke Griffin was here in my arms, free and breathing and kissing me back, and I felt like I could do anything.  She kissed me and I kissed her and I felt her strength and grit flow into me, I felt my fear dissolve, and even though I knew we would have to stop very soon because there was work to do, I held out as long as I could, breathing her in.  She smelled like car exhaust and sweat and a hot New York night and I thought about how far she had come in three weeks from the pink-and-gold girl in the Parisian cocktail dress she had been before I met her.  The princess was still in there, but there was a warrior inside her now too. 

I forced myself, finally, to pull away from her and look her in the eye.

“That was . . . unexpected,” she said, raising an eyebrow and grinning at me, and I was about to say something back when we both heard a noise.  Someone had moved from the shadow of the warehouses at the top of the pier was moving towards us.  Clarke melted back into the shadows just as Cage Wallace, at the top of the gangplank, stepped into view.

“Lovejoy!” he called down at me, and I looked up. “You take care of the kid?”

_Dammit._

_Well,_ I thought to myself, _I guess that answers the question about whether I'm inside the trap or outside it._

I didn’t trust my voice, but waved and pointed at Lovejoy’s facedown dead body, bleeding away on the dock, hoping Cage didn't come any closer.  He smiled and waved back. “Good work,” he said. “Grab your gear and take over for Emerson on cargo duty, I need him on the upper deck with me.” And then I watched as the metal gangplank lowered and the _Mount Weather_ was suddenly right in front of me, its doors wide open.  I ripped the namebadge off Lovejoy's jacket, pulled off the one on mine that said BLAKE, exchanged them, and pulled my hat down low over my face.

“Go," whispered Clarke from the shadows of the dock pylons.  "Five minutes.  I'll be right behind you."

* * *

The problem facing me now, of course, was that having once kissed her, I didn't want to stop ever again for the rest of my life, but shouting _Now is not the time!_ to myself over and over again was only moderately successful.  So instead, as I waited for Clarke in the shadowy hidden corner of a small empty storage locker on the cargo level, I paced back and forth and thought about the six girls hidden somewhere nearby, and how the hell we were going to get them out. 

I heard footsteps and froze, then saw Clarke duck around a dark corner.  I reached out my hand and pulled her inside, closing the door behind us.

_Now is not the time, Bellamy._

She pulled the dark scarf off her head and shook out her blonde hair, running a hand through it. The dim light from the flickering bulbs in the hallway cast a wavy green light on her, making her look a little bit like a mermaid. She looked at me quizzically and I realized I’d been staring, and abruptly looked away, staring down at my feet and scuffing my shoe on the grated metal floor of the ship.

"Do you know what they're going to do with the girls?" she asked, recalling me to the present, and my head snapped up. 

"There's a team on the ship loading them into cargo crates," I said, "and another team hauling the crates up the cargo ramp of the pier to where the trucks are waiting.  They'll be coming to get them any minute.  And there are dozens of men up at the top of the pier where the trucks are.  We thought the Grounders would be able to take care of them, but the ship's two hours early.  Everyone's showing up at midnight.  I don't know if there's anyone but us."  I started, suddenly, realizing I hadn't yet asked the most obvious question.  "Wait a minute," I said.  "Clarke.  _What the hell are you doing here_?"

"Took you long enough," she retorted.

"Did you climb out the window again?"

"No," she said, "I can't take any credit for this, unfortunately.  No heroics.  They let me go."

"They let you go?"

She nodded.  "Lorelai put something in my tea at breakfast, I think," she said, "because I felt myself get fuzzy and dizzy and bleary-eyed almost immediately.  It must have been something to knock me out, because that was around nine in the morning, and then I woke up just a few hours ago.  They dumped me in an alley, somewhere in the East Village.  I wasn't hurt or anything," she said hastily, seeing my face contort with worry, "she just slipped me a mickey, that was all.  They didn't hurt me.  They didn't try to kill me.  They just knocked me out.  And then I woke up and I was free.  They were all gone."

"How," I began, then stopped.  "Why - what would they -"

"I think it was a hostage trade," she said in a dark voice.  "I think they have my mother." 

I couldn't repress a thought of Kane, out of his mind with worry, wondering where Abigail had gone. 

Unless . . .

Oh no.

Unless Kane had been _with_ her.

_Don't think about Kane._

"You think Dante swapped you for Abigail?" I asked.  "When he realized you didn't know whatever he thought you knew?"

She shook her head. “Not Dante," she said.  "The man he works for.”

“Dante Wallace doesn’t work for anybody,” I said. “Dante Wallace is the kingpin. He’s as high as it goes.”

“No,” she said. “Not this time. Remember when I told you it wasn’t about the money? That there was something about my father they were trying to figure out?” I nodded. There was a sudden noise outside and she froze, pulled me against the wall deeper into the corner, pressing her body up against mine as we both tried to flatten ourselves into invisibility behind the door – _you can’t kiss her, Bellamy, get it together_ – and watched to make sure no one was coming. I was breathing hard, for all kinds of reasons, but I gritted my teeth and pushed the thoughts down as Clarke relaxed a little and then pulled away from me as the danger passed. “There’s a cop,” she went on, resuming her story. “High up. He used to be friends with my father, a long time ago, but they had a falling out.  A bad one.  My dad knew he was corrupt and threatened to go to the papers and turn him in if he didn’t go clean. I wasn’t supposed to know about it – Dad never told me anything, not directly, but I overheard bits and pieces. But the cop’s son is a friend of mine, and he would say things to me – about people he saw coming to the house at weird hours, things like that – and I started to put it together with things I had overheard between my parents, and -“

“Thelonious Jaha,” I blurted out, the words falling from my lips before I even realized what I had said. She stared at me.

“Yes,” she said, a little warily. “How did you know?”

And so, as quickly and quietly as I could, I told her all the bits of the story I had left out when we first met in the Plaza Hotel. About my investigation, Jaha’s phone call, my unexpected probation, and Clarke’s mother storming into the NYPD Central Precinct like a Valkyrie to read Thelonious Jaha the riot act. I told her everything that had happened after I’d left her, about Lincoln and Cage Wallace and about how the ship wasn’t supposed to arrive for two more hours and that I was afraid I was going to get everyone I cared about in the world killed.  And I couldn't stop thinking about them then, about Kane and Lincoln and most of all, Octavia, I couldn't stop thinking about what would happen to them if they showed up an hour before midnight expecting the dock to be empty and walked into an ambush, and about how if only I'd spotted it sooner, we could have stopped it, we could have _done_ something, I didn't know what, but _something_.

Clarke listened to me ramble and storm around the storage locker, pacing back and forth, suddenly unable to keep still, and suddenly I felt her lay a hand on my arm, calm and steady, and I felt some of her cool focused strength flow into me through the touch of her skin.

I felt my breathing slow and deepen and my pounding heart return to normal.

She looked up at me and I looked down at her and for a long moment we were the only two people in the world.

“How many guards are there?” she asked suddenly. "The whole formation.  Talk me through it."

"The big cluster is at the top of the pier," I said, thinking hard, "and they'll only come down if it looks like something's going wrong.  They're on loading and shipment duty.  Armed, but too far away to hear anything."

"So if we're quiet, they'll never come near us."

"Exactly."

"And the others?"

"There were twelve on the team guarding the ship and the cargo," I said.  "Five on the pier - me and Lovejoy on one side, two on the other, one in the center."

"So if we cast off the ship," she said.  "If we get it out into the water away from the rest of the Wallaces.  Then how many?""

That would leave seven aboard the ship," I said, counting carefully.  "Emerson's the leader, it's him and six other guys.  Plus Cage.  And probably Dante and Lorelai, somewhere.  They'll all be armed too.  So ten altogether."

I felt a grim sense of foreboding at this careful tally of just how many armed men stood between us and freedom, but Clarke appeared strangely pleased.

"That's not bad," she said, satisfaction in her voice.  "Nearly even." And I watched in bafflement as she hoisted a crowbar from the corner of the storage cupboard.  "Come on," she said.  "I have a plan." 

"They outnumber us five to one," I said incredulously, following her out the door. "How is that 'nearly even?'  There are only two of us."

“No, there aren't," she tossed casually over her shoulder at me as she took off down the hall. “There are eight.”

_You can’t kiss her, Bellamy. Get it together._

 

**MIDNIGHT: KANE**

_Clarke Griffin was alive._

She was dirty and bedraggled and wearing a Mount Weather guard uniform and holding a gun on Dante Wallace and she was _alive,_ both the Griffin women were _alive_.  In at least this one respect, I had not failed Abigail.  I felt my whole body collapse in relief, and I saw tears spring to Abby’s eyes where she stood beside me.

“Clarke,” she breathed, in a hoarse raw voice. “Clarke.”

“Mom,” Clarke whispered back, and they were so alike in that moment, they were cut from the same cloth, because I saw Clarke’s eyes well up with tears of guilt and relief and sorrow and anger and hopeless, all-consuming love, I saw her lock onto her mother and felt the cord that stretched between them – and yet her hand never once wavered on the gun at Dante Wallace’s temple.

She was her mother’s daughter all right.

“Let them go, Cage,” Clarke said firmly. “Let all of them go, and turn the ship around. Or your father dies.”

Cage looked her up and down a little dubiously.

"Am I supposed to be shaking in my shoes or something?" he sneered at her.  "Honey, you don't even know how to shoot that thing."

“Maybe, maybe not," she shrugged.  "Want to test me and find out?"

He sighed, entirely unfazed.  "Look, little girl," he said patiently.  "This is very cute, I'm sure whichever one of these boys you're screwing is real impressed, but I've got seven hired killers and one very dangerous girlfriend on board this ship, and a couple dozen more on the pier that are close enough to come running if I whistle.  So you've had your fun, sweetheart, but now you're gonna quit playing around and you're going to take that gun you're holding on my father and you're gonna toss it very slowly over the side of the boat.  And if you do exactly what I tell you, I’ll consider killing you quickly instead of slowly. That’s my best offer.”

Clarke didn't even bat an eyelash.  (My God, these Griffin women.)

“No deal,” said Clarke in a voice made of iron. “I’m taking your ship.”

“Is that so?” chuckled Cage. “You and what army?”

Which, it turned out, had been exactly the wrong thing to say, as a crowd of shapes melted out of the shadows as though he'd somehow summoned them into being.  I watched in astonishment as the shapes resolved themselves into six girls, with matted hair and wild angry eyes, wearing guard uniforms stolen from the Wallace Boys' flash team.  Some of the uniforms were spattered with blood.

"This one," Clarke answered as the Furies closed in on Cage Wallace, and if my hands hadn't been tied behind me I would have applauded.  It was the best piece of theater I'd ever seen in my life. 

“Do what she says,” said Dante Wallace, speaking for the first time, his voice remarkably calm under the circumstances.  Cage shook his head, still disbelieving.

"I saw the cargo crates," he said.  "I saw the team load them into the trucks."

Clarke nodded.  "Yes, you did," she said.  "And the rest of your team drove away with the cargo crates.  You want to know who was in them?  Just check the names on their jackets.  We let Lorelai keep hers, though, as a courtesy.  Awfully chilly in that metal box."

Cage's face contorted with rage, and I had the extraordinary and profound delight of watching him stagger backward a few steps, reaching out to steady himself on the railing of the boat.

That was the first moment it occurred to me that we might - just _might_ \- make it out of this alive.

"No one's coming for you, Cage," she said.  "The men downstairs are all gone.  Let these people go, and I’ll consider killing you quickly instead of slowly. That’s my best offer.”

He didn't respond immediately as the net tightened around Jaha, who was strangely quiet and still, and both the Wallaces.  The girls closed in, guns at the ready, clad in uniforms that were too big for most of them, and it was both the most beautiful and the most horrible thing I had ever seen in my life.  They were alive - every one of them was alive - but you could not look at them too closely or it would break your heart a little.  

I had spent so many days staring at their faces on that evidence wall that I felt as though I had known them all their lives, and their innocent young eyes smiling out at me from inside those photographs made a strange, sick contrast to the sight in front of me.

Nell Harper had been missing the longest, and her blonde hair was dark with grime and dirt.  _Charleston, South Carolina,_ I thought.  _Victim #1.  Harper's Hatpins._   She had been a fair-haired Southern debutante once, but now she was something else entirely.  She aimed her gun at Cage Wallace's heart with the firm, sure grip of a girl whose daddy took her hunting, and she wore the bruises and scars all over her face with no self-consciousness, standing tall and fearless at the front of the line, a half-step in front of the smallest girl _(Charlotte Cooper, Norfolk Virginia, Victim #5)_ who hoisted a gun nearly as large as herself in Nell Harper's shadow.  Charlotte looked serious, and worried, but I could see her biting her lip and swallowing hard like she was trying to be brave. The Arbor cousins, Lexa and Anya _(Portland, Oregon, #3 and #4, Arbor Logging Incorporated)_ stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the other side of Charlotte, fire in their eyes, hair streaming in the wind.  They were both tall and strong, and a little frightening, and seemed by some unspoken agreement to have established themselves as the leaders, standing in the center of the girls' circle formation.  Standing a little farther back from them, a bit more timid and hesitant but still gritting her teeth and holding herself stead, I saw the sweet-faced Maya Vie _(San Francisco, Victim #6),_ who had only been taken a month ago and still had a softness to her that had long-since been burned away from Nell Harper, who'd spent seven months trapped inside this ship.  The Arbors formed a shield around Maya, supported on the other side by the square-jawed Molly Monroe _(Victim #2, Boston, Irish mob),_ who up close looked even more like a gangster's daughter than she had in her photo.  Monroe, like Harper, held her gun with practiced ease, shoulders back and head held high.  Molly Monroe was not afraid to shoot anybody.  Her flaming red hair was braided back from her temples in an intricate fashion, and I suddenly noticed that little Charlotte's hair was tied back the same way.

And that was when something inside me broke.

I thought about those girls, locked in the dark for months on end, not knowing if rescue would ever come, not knowing if they'd ever see their families again, or feel sunlight and breathe air, with nothing to hold onto but each other.  No one to lean on, no one to help them.  No parents.  Just them.  I thought about Maya crying in the night as Harper comforted her.  I thought about Monroe braiding Charlotte's hair to keep it from blowing in her face so Charlotte could aim her gun. 

 _Damn you to hell,_ I shouted silently, glaring darkly from Cage to Jaha to Dante.  _All three of you.  I will see you burn for this._

Lexa gave Harper a nod as the circle tightened around their three captors.  Harper handed Lexa her gun, pulled a knife out of her pocket, and darted over to us where she began sawing through the heavy, thick ropes binding us each to the deck rail, beginning down the line with Octavia.

“Hands up,” said Anya to Cage and Jaha.

Jaha complied.

Cage did not.

“It’s over, Cage,” Clarke said again, just ever so faintly more uncertain - _why wasn't he doing what she told him?  was he calling her bluff?_ \- and I began to feel a little afraid, I began to worry that this wasn’t going the way it was supposed to go.

Cage wasn’t backing down.  He had the wild eyes of a cornered animal, of a cobra about to lash out, of a man who didn’t know the fight had been lost.  Which is the most dangerous kind of man there is.

“It’s over when I say it’s over,” he said to Clarke, eyes flashing, and then whirled around and aimed his gun straight at my heart.

Monroe was closest to him, and her instincts served her well. She lunged at him and knocked the gun sideways as it fired. It missed me. But I only had a split-second to feel any relief about it before I heard a scream.

Abigail, beside me, crumpled to the ground.

**10 P.M.: BELLAMY**

They were just dark shapes at first, huddled in the back of a big concrete room. They looked like one big shadow. 

“I’m Clarke Griffin,” said Clarke, stepping into the room and closing the door behind her, with me following behind her. “I’m the seventh. I’m the seventh girl Cage Wallace took. This is Bellamy Blake, he looks like a guard but he’s not. He’s on our side. And we’re going to get all of you out of here. Okay?”

The big shadow in the back did not respond at first.

“Come into the light,” said Clarke. “It’s okay. I promise, it’s okay.”

“How do we know we can trust you?” said a small voice. “The other lady looked nice, too. The other lady was pretty and she had a pretty red dress and she said we were going to a party. But we weren’t.”

“Are you Charlotte Cooper?” I asked, setting down my gun and kneeling down on the concrete floor. I reached out my hand, and slowly, tentatively, a small shape disentangled itself from the darkness and came towards me, and I saw a face I recognized from the police file that Norfolk Central Precinct had sent over to Fox.

“My name is Bellamy,” I said, “and I’ve been looking for you. I’ve been looking for all of you. Your parents don’t know where you are, and we’re going to get you home, okay?” I took Charlotte’s hand. “I promise you, we’re going to get you home.”

Charlotte looked down at me, trying to decide whether or not to trust me.

“It’s scary in here sometimes,” she confided. “It’s dark all the time. I don’t like it.”

“I bet,” I agreed, nodding.

“I have nightmares,” she said. “About the lady in the red dress.”

“I have a little sister,” I said. “She’s been through some scary things too. She had a man try to hurt her once. But we had a friend, and he taught her how to protect herself, so that when the man tried to grab her, he couldn’t do it. She got him instead. She was safe.” Charlotte looked at me. “So that’s what we’re going to do, okay?” I said firmly. “Me and Clarke, we’re going to help you stay safe.”

A larger shape stepped forward out of the shadows, and then a few more, and suddenly there they all were in the dim light, all five of the older girls moving forward and clustering protectively around Charlotte.

Lexa Arbor addressed me first.

“What’s the plan?” she said.

“There are men in uniforms with cargo crates,” Clarke said to her. “They’re planning to pack you up inside them and haul them up the pier to load into a bunch of waiting trucks. And then once the trucks drive away, nearly all the armed men inside go with them. They don’t care about the ship, they were hired to protect the cargo. You. So once the cargo’s away, the ship is nearly clear.”

“So what do we do?”

Clarke grinned at her. “They’re expecting a locked shipping container full of live hostages. So let’s give them one.”

* * *

Guns were too risky, I decided. We had to be silent. So we broke up into teams of twos and threes, spreading out all over the cargo floor. When a guard came down the stairs, one of us would slip up behind him, cover his mouth so he couldn’t cry out, and then another would knock him unconscious with a crowbar or piece of scrap metal. We carried the bodies inside, where Charlotte Cooper and Maya Vie – who were the youngest, and a little nervous about doing the actual attacking – busied themselves stripping the uniforms off the men and handing them out to the other girls.

I had counted correctly – besides Lovejoy, who was still bleeding facedown on the pier masquerading as my dead body, there had been six men inside the ship. In less than an hour, we had silently taken out every one of them, found the room holding the cargo crates, and loaded the bound and gagged men inside.

“We have to find Lorelai Tsing and get her in there too,” I said, pulling Clarke out into the hallway as the girls changed their clothes and pulled guard hats down low to cover up their hair. “She’s the one who runs the Wallace Boys’ opium trade. If we can get her into that shipping container – and if we can get someone, anyone, from the police to follow those trucks and catch her at the end of it, they’ll be able to shut the whole thing down.”

Clarke nodded. “If she’s the only one who knows where your friend Lincoln is, we can’t kill her,” she agreed, with a sigh. “Though I’d so much rather shoot her in the head.”

“Were you always like this?” I asked, a little hesitantly, and it surprised her into something that was almost a laugh.

“Like what?” she asked. “Sneaking around cargo ships with a crowbar? I was tied up in a hotel room for two weeks, Bellamy. You have no idea how many times I’ve run this drill in my head. This is a lot less bloody than the way I imagined it.”

Anya Arbor opened the door just then to reveal the girls in their borrowed guard uniforms standing in front of the shipping container full of bodies. We had found a wheeled dolly to get it up the gangplank, and it only took about four of us to push. Molly Monroe and the Arbor girls were tallest and fit their uniforms the best; the other girls were smaller and I didn’t want anyone looking too closely at them.

“You three,” I said to Monroe, Lexa and Anya. “You’re with me. We’re taking this cargo crate up to the top of the pier. The rest of you,” I said to Harper, Maya and Charlotte, “I need you to conceal yourselves somewhere on the lower deck near the gangplank. As soon as we’re back on board, we’re casting off this ship. You’re going to have to untie the ropes and push off. Got it?”

Everyone nodded.

“Where’s she going?” asked Lexa, gesturing to Clarke.

Clarke picked up a gun from the pile of stolen guard weaponry.

“I’m going to go have a word with my grandfather,” she said, and something inside her voice made me look up at her sharply.

“Be careful,” I warned her. She shook her head.

“Don’t be afraid for me,” she said. “Be afraid for Dante Wallace.”

We exchanged a long look. Then she hoisted her gun, pulled her hat down low over her blonde hair, and disappeared around the corner. I looked back at the girls.

“All right, team,” I said. “Let’s get to work.”

**MIDNIGHT: KANE**

I cried out Abby's name, frantically, desperately straining at my bonds, trying to get to her. Harper was still at the end of the line, sawing through rope.  _Hurry, hurry, hurry,_ I begged her silently.

“Mom!” cried Clarke, and I watched the internal war inside her eyes between rushing over to Abby and staying where she was, cold steel pressed against Dante’s head.

“Cage, you idiot, what have you done?” snapped Dante, icy fury in his voice.

I strained against my rope to pull myself free. Abby had collapsed onto the deck of the ship, and I could see a pool of dark blood staining the metal floor but I hadn’t been able to see where she’d been wounded. Maya Vie dropped her gun and ran to Abby’s side, pulling off her jacket to staunch the blood and wrapping her arms around Abby to support her weight, since her arms were still bound to the railing above her.

“You son of a bitch,” rasped Raven at my side, straining at the rope binding her hands like a wild animal. “I’ll rip out your fucking throat.”

“Marcus,” Abby murmured from the ground beside me.

“It’s okay, Abby,” I murmured helplessly over and over again, tears stinging my eyes, trying to pull myself free. “It’s okay. We’re going to be okay.”

“Hurry up!” called Jasper to Harper, who was the only one with a knife and was still sawing away at Octavia's bonds.

“I’m trying!” she yelled back. “I’m going as fast as I can!”

The chaos swirled around us, a maelstrom of blood and panic and screaming, and I suddenly found my gaze pulled upwards to Clarke Griffin, tears streaming down her face, standing perfectly still at the center of it all.

“I warned you,” she said in a quiet voice, almost a whisper, but there was something dreadful inside it that silenced all of us. “I warned you. I gave you a chance.”

Then she pulled the trigger of her gun and shot her grandfather in the head.

The world stopped as the sharp, horrible sound crashed through the night silence, and we all froze in our tracks.  Then the following seven things happened at the same time:

 _One._ There was suddenly blood everywhere.

 _Two._ Abby let out a desperate, anguished cry, calling out her daughter’s name as Dante Wallace hit the deck of the boat.

 _Three._ Jasper doubled over, contorting his body around his bound hands and was suddenly, violently sick all over the deck of the boat.  The potent acidic smell blended horribly with the metallic scent of blood and caused us all to feel dizzy and ill for several long moments until the salty harbor breeze came and swept it away.

 _Four._ Monroe leaped into action, whirling Charlotte Cooper around and swinging the girl into her arms as Charlotte buried her face in Monroe’s chest. “Don’t look, kid,” murmured the older girl, stroking her hair. “Don’t turn around, okay? Don’t look.”

 _Five._ Harper finally sawed through the rope, and Octavia ran down the line to reach me, frantically pulling at the knots around my wrist, as Harper and her knife moved on to free the boys.

 _Six._ Cage Wallace absolutely lost his mind and began screaming a long dark ribbon of obscenities in Clarke’s direction, then pulled out his gun and fired three times, wildly, one after the other.

 _Seven._ Raven went down.

 _Oh no,_ I thought to myself in anguish.  _No, no, no, no._

"Raven!" screamed Octavia, who pulled the last of the rope off my wrists and then turned to catch Raven as she dropped to the ground while I seized Abby in my arms.  Octavia lowered Raven gently and then tugged wildly at the rope knots to free Raven's arms so she could lay her down, crying out her name over and over again.  "I got you, Raven," she said, stroking her hair, "honey, I got you.  You're okay." 

My heart pounding, I looked from one woman to the other, _Oh please oh please oh please . . ._

Mercifully, Cage had been too enraged to aim properly and had missed Raven's vital organs, catching her in the thigh, but the bullet had pierced her leg clean through and her screams of pain were awful.  Lexa Arbor pulled off her jacket and threw it at Octavia, who caught it and pressed it against Raven's wounded leg.

"Is this . . ." croaked Raven to her in a broken voice, "the wrong time to tell . . . to tell you . . . that I borrowed this dress from you?"

Octavia laughed, tears in her eyes, pressing the jacket against Raven's wound to staunch the blood flow.

"If I had a dollar for every time you've borrowed something from my closet and gotten yourself shot in it," she said, and a rough little laugh broke through Raven's sobs of pain, and I loved them so much I thought my heart would crack into a thousand pieces inside my chest.

Only then, only after seeing Raven come back to herself, was I finally brave enough to risk looking at Abby.  Thanks to Monroe, she too had been caught only in the leg, and I felt my breathing ease the faintest bit that her wound did not look fatal. But her face was pale and sweaty and frightened and her cries of pain flipped a switch inside me, and as I clutched her tightly, burying my face in her shoulder, and reached out my other free hand to grasp Raven’s beside me, the whole world slowed, stilled, and then ceased moving altogether.

I was no longer Marcus Kane.  I was no longer even human. I was a white-hot pillar of rage.

I was so angry, so full of hate, that I felt it wash over me physically, like a fever. My whole body felt hot, then cold, then hot again. I wanted to kill Cage Wallace, and then Thelonious Jaha, and I wanted to do it slowly, with my bare hands, and I wanted it to hurt.

 _I will see you all burn for this,_ I thought, pressing kisses into Abby Griffin's hair as the pale-faced Maya Vie, who had run in front of an armed madman to get to her, pressed the thick canvas of her stolen jacket against Abby's leg and smiled up at her hopefully.

"It's not so bad," she said to Abby.  "You're going to be just fine.  Promise."

My attention was pulled away from the women around me as Clarke stepped over the dead body at her feet and drew closer to Cage.

"You have two bullets left," she pointed out to him very calmly, watching as he aimed his pistol with trembling fingers at first one and then the other of us before settling, for some reason, on Octavia, who was still kneeling beside me and cradling Raven in her arms.  "It's over, Cage.  All the guns are on my side.  Put that one down."

I watched as a thought struck Cage suddenly, and I saw him looking at the girls one by one, and I realized – with a quick knifing pang of horror – that he was reading the name badges on their stolen guard jackets.

"I count six uniforms," he said.  "There were seven men on the ship.  Emerson had five with him and Lovejoy was down below.  You missed one, little girl," he said almost gleefully to Clarke Griffin, and I felt my heart stop beating.  "You missed one." 

 _Oh no,_ I thought. _Oh no, oh no._

They had missed one.

_Cage had another gun._

"Lovejoy!" screamed Cage in a broken, wild, borderline hysterical voice.  "Lovejoy!"

A man in a jacket that said LOVEJOY on it stepped out of the shadows behind Cage, machine gun at the ready.

But it wasn't Lovejoy.

I felt my heart leap in my chest and I couldn't stop myself from laughing out loud at the same time that I saw Jaha go absolutely still with fear.

“Lovejoy’s dead,” said Bellamy.  "And I'll thank you to not to wave that gun at my sister.”

  **11 P.M.: BELLAMY**

It was just barely eleven by the time we returned, safe and sound, onto the ship. The girls had performed their parts flawlessly, and the men in the trucks hadn’t even batted an eye as the four of us pushed the vast metal box up the ramp and into their truck.

The first place I went wrong was that I wanted to get the girls out of there before any of the men on the team guarding the trucks noticed that they were girls. Which meant I led them back down the gangplank and onto the ship before I remembered that I hadn’t seen Emerson in awhile, and before I noticed that only one of the three trucks actually drove away.

The four of us stepped onto the gangplank and found the other three girls where they hid in the shadows, waiting to cast off.

“Now?” asked Harper softly, and I almost said yes before I saw a sight that stopped my heart.

“Oh no,” I whispered. “No, no, no.”

Harper followed my eyes up to the top of the pier.

“Who’s that guy?” she asked.

“His name’s Emerson,” I said, “and he’s Cage Wallace’s right hand man.”

“And who’s he got with him?”

“That’s my family,” I said, feeling my blood run cold. “He’s got them all.”

And that's when I heard gunfire at the top of the pier.

The Grounders were here.  And the Wallace Boys had found them.

“What do we do?” she whispered. I looked around at the six girls, guns in hand, waiting for their instructions.

“We let him take them on board,” I said finally. “We’re going to have to be fast, and quiet, and take out those guards one at a time, without Cage suspecting a thing. Cage has to think his ship is still full of men who work for him. And then we cast off the ship before any of those men with guns at the top of the pier make it on board.  Got it?”

They nodded. I pulled them back into the shadows of the ship’s cabin and watched in pained horror as Emerson marched Kane, Octavia, Raven, Jasper and Monty up the gangplank.

He was leading them up the stairs to the upper deck, where I’d heard movement earlier. The upper deck spanned the whole width of the ship, and on this side – where Emerson was leading the prisoners – there was an exterior stairwell, open to the air, leading up from the lower deck. But on the far side of the ship, well away from the lights of the pier, there was an interior stairwell that opened into the upper cabin, which no one was guarding.

Four men followed Emerson up the gangplank, guns trained on my family. One by one, they were quietly pulled away, hands clamped over mouths, knocked out, and ever-so-quietly dropped into the dark water, as three girls in uniforms – Anya, Lexa and Monroe – and I took their places and followed Emerson up the stairs, then disappeared into the far shadows on the upper deck. Charlotte, Maya and Harper carefully and quietly unlatched the metal gangplank, untied the rope and pushed off, and just like that, the ship was detached from the pier and sailing away.

I hadn’t seen Clarke since we parted, but I had to trust her to find her way to us on her own. Right now I couldn’t do anything to help her. Right now my entire world had shrunk down to the size of one thing – watching Emerson tie up Kane and my sister and all our friends, and then waiting for him to walk into the shadows where I could get to him.

“Now what?” murmured Monroe to me, as we stood in the dark, guns at the ready, giving Cage the impression that he was protected by a fleet of armed guards.

“Now,” I said, “we wait for our cue from Clarke.”

 

**MIDNIGHT: KANE**

Octavia froze at my side, then turned slowly around to see her brother, in a borrowed Mount Weather guard uniform, standing there holding a gun at Cage Wallace’s head, and her face in that moment broke my heart. She was so young, still, Octavia. It was easy to forget that sometimes.  So tough, but so, so young. When she was taken by surprise, the iron wall around her would crack and all her emotions were just right there on the surface in front of you, open and vulnerable and tender. I watched her face crumple as the steely look in her eyes was replaced by bright shining tears, and that was when I knew that all this time she had absolutely, unequivocally believed that she was never going to see her brother again.

“Bell?” she whispered in a small voice. 

“Sorry I'm a little late," he said, smiling at her, and I could see tears in his eyes too.

In the madness of the past few minutes, amidst the shooting and the screaming, Jaha had remained quietly still, obediently raising his arms in the air when Clarke asked him to and not moving from his spot. But something about the sudden, miraculous appearance of Bellamy pointing a gun at him sent him absolutely over the edge.

“You stupid, stupid boy,” he hissed, “you have no idea what you’ve done. All of you. Children, that’s what you are. Naïve little children. You think these are toys. You think this is a game we’re playing. You’re all so proud of yourselves because you think you’ve been clever. You’re a _boy,_ Bellamy Blake. A boy playing a man’s game. And you’ll never win. The Wallace Boys are everywhere. Chop off the snake’s head and seven more grow back. _You will never win.”_

His voice was cold, and quiet, and almost calm, but there was a fanatical, frenzied glow in his eyes that suddenly struck me as the most genuinely terrifying thing I’d seen all night long. Dante Wallace was a thug. Cage Wallace was a murderer. But Thelonious Jaha, I realized, was actually the most unhinged of them all.

Bellamy hesitated, just a little, and Jaha smiled a cold, cruel smile at him. “You can’t do it,” he said. “You can’t really shoot me. You don’t have it in you. You’re not the right kind of man. You and Kane, you’re too soft. You never had what it took. You were never real cops. You’re _weak,_ both of you. You could never do what needed to be done. If you were a _real_ man, you’d have shot me by now.”

Clarke took a step towards them - just a small one - and Bellamy caught her movement out of the corner of his eye, as though suddenly remembering that she was there.  They looked at each other for a long moment, and I watched as all Bellamy's hesitation dissolved away.  His back straightened.  His grip on the gun tightened.  He was tough and steady and whatever had just passed silently between him and Clarke, he was no longer afraid of Thelonious Jaha.

“I’m not going to shoot you,” Bellamy said evenly. “Because that’s too easy. You’ve lost, so you’d rather die than face the consequences of losing. You _want_ me to shoot you.” He looked over at Octavia. “Tie him up,” he said to her, and she did, pulling the rope from the ground next to me that had fastened my hands, and using it to secure Jaha to the railing. And if she was a little more violent in her actions than was altogether necessary, well, I don’t know anyone who’d blame her. “I’m not going to shoot you,” said Bellamy again, as Octavia bound Jaha’s hands. “No, I’m going to _humiliate_ you instead.  _Lots_ more fun.  We’re going to take this ship back to harbor and turn you in. You’re going to be perp-walked through your own precinct, Thelonious, think about that. You’re going to have to hire a lawyer. It’ll be in all the papers. Even the seedy ones. I’ll give live interviews. We all will. We’ll embellish within an inch of our lives. ‘He cried for mercy,’ we’ll say. ‘He was so afraid of those girls that he wet himself.’ And then, this will be the fun part,” he went on, stepping in close to Jaha and facing him squarely, “I’ll call every Grounder I know to come forward and testify, they’ll bring up every single false arrest you ever committed, and they’ll add in a few extra for good measure, and they’ll go through that dirty evidence file Jacob Griffin gave to his wife and they’ll dig up every single witness who can testify to every single thing you’ve ever done wrong in your life. No, you don’t get a nice clean hero’s death out here on this boat. You’re going to die in prison. All the Grounders you put away are gonna have a field day when you get to Sing Sing, Thelonious.  It'll be the biggest party they've ever seen.  I'm never going to have to buy Indra a Christmas present ever again."  He looked over at Cage Wallace. “That goes for you too,” he added. “You’ve got two bullets left. You want to use one of them on me, be my guest. But you’ll have to use the other one on either Clarke Griffin or my sister, and God help you when whichever one you don’t shoot picks up this gun when I drop it.”

There was a long silence after that as we all watched to see what Cage would do. 

“I was right about you,” he finally said, smiling rather unexpectedly. “When you walked in yesterday with Lincoln at gunpoint, I thought to myself, ‘this kid’s got guts, at least. He may be dumb, but he’s no coward.’”

Bellamy didn’t take the compliment – in fact, he seemed hardly to hear it. He was looking at Octavia.

We all were.

_Walked in with Lincoln at gunpoint?_

“Bellamy,” said Octavia evenly, rising to her feet, picking up a gun from the floor and aiming it at Cage Wallace. “Where’s Lincoln?”

 

**MIDNIGHT: BELLAMY**

I looked at my sister, standing there covered in someone else’s blood, _again,_ but with a gun in her hand this time instead of a knife. 

I saw that same flat, steel-eyed look on her face she always got when she went deep inside, to that place where nothing could hurt her, to that place where all the sad things and all the painful things were walled off and she was safe, and I felt a little sick.  Because she _wasn’t_ safe. Nothing could protect her from the thing I had to tell her now. Nothing could shield her from the pain of that. I had to look her in the eye and tell her I had no idea where Lincoln was, that he had been drugged by Cage and Lorelai, that he was likely either dead, or crazed on toxin-laced opium and lost to the real world forever.

I didn’t know how to tell Octavia that this had all been my fault. That I should have stopped it, but I didn’t know how.

I opened my mouth to speak, but never got the chance, because instantly every single person on the deck of that ship froze as the same sudden noise echoed in the silence and startled us all, sending chills into all our bones.

“What’s that sound?” asked Charlotte in a small voice, still in Molly Monroe’s arms, and it was Clarke who answered her.

“Someone’s in the water,” she said softly. “Someone just climbed over the side of the boat.”

And then every one of us, from Cage and Jaha to Anya and Lexa to Jasper and Monty, went silent and still, paralyzed with fear at the slow dull _clang, clang, clang_ of hands on metal as we listened intently to the sound of someone climbing from rung to rung up the ladder on the side of the ship.

Nobody could move. We could all see each other frantically going back over the events of the night in our heads, wondering whether it was rescue or doom climbing up that ladder. And so when the thing finally happened, we were all too slow to react. We were all still motionless when the huge dark shape swung itself over the railing and suddenly Cage Wallace sank fluidly, almost gracefully, to the deck, a bright ribbon of red where his throat used to be.

“Blood will have blood,” intoned a soaking wet Lincoln, seawater dripping off his sodden clothes, his eyes blank and unseeing and slightly feral as the knife in his hand clattered to the ground. “Blood will have blood.”

Octavia dropped her gun and ran to him, crying out his name and taking him in her arms, and it was like a switch flipped inside all the rest of us and we realized it was over.

It was really, truly over.

I watched Lincoln drop to his knees and Octavia sank down with him, holding him tight.

“I’m sorry, Octavia,” I said, my voice cracking a little.  She looked up at me, wondering. “He was trying to keep us all safe,” I explained. “He walked into danger to keep us all alive. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect him. I’m sorry I couldn’t stop it.”

“You _did_ protect him, big brother,” she said, her eyes shining with tears. “You did. He’s _here,_ Bell. We’re all right here.  We made it.  Everyone made it.”

“There’s something in the opium they gave him,” I said desperately, “they did something to him, I don’t know –“

She shook her head. “He beat it once,” she said firmly. “He can do it again.” She placed her hand on his cheek and he looked up at her, something wild and distant behind his eyes. “Lincoln,” she said, her voice hard and insistent. _“Lincoln.”_

“Blood will have blood,” he murmured wildly in her arms, over and over again. “Blood will have blood. Blood will have blood.”

“Lincoln,” she said again, harsher this time. “Lincoln.  Stay with me, baby.  Stay with me.  What do we say?  What did you teach me?  Say it." She slapped his cheek a few times, very lightly. “Lincoln. Say it. Come on, baby, say it.”  And something happened in his eyes, suddenly, they shifted into focus just a little, and I knew that he was pushing through the drug-addled haze and he saw her, really _saw_ her, that Lincoln was still alive inside there.

“Fall . . . down,” he croaked roughly, “get . . . back . . . up.”

Octavia burst into tears, a smile on her face, and kissed him over and over again.  “That’s right, baby,” she said, pulling him tightly into her arms. “Fall down, get back up.”

“Octavia,” he whispered in a broken voice. “Octavia.”

“I’m right here,” she said. “We’re okay. We made it. I’m right here.”

It suddenly felt too private to watch them anymore, so I turned away, where I saw a teary-eyed Clarke Griffin kneel down by the side of her mother. Kane, whose stricken face had gone pale when Abigail got shot, was still holding her in his arms as Clarke knelt down and embraced her.

“Mom,” she said. “Mom, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I had to –“

“You saved our lives, Clarke,” said Abigail, tears streaming down her face as she embraced her daughter fiercely. “You don’t have to apologize to me.” She kissed Clarke’s hair over and over again. “My baby,” she said quietly. “My baby. I missed you so much.”

“Are you Marcus Kane?” Clarke asked suddenly, looking up at him. Kane nodded, and was visibly startled when Clarke leaned in and pressed a kiss on his cheek.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice throbbing with emotion. “None of us would be here without you. Thank you for everything you did. You saved my mother's life.  You saved all of us.” She squeezed his hand. “You saved all of us,” she said again.

Kane smiled at her and briefly withdrew his arms from Abigail, leaning her carefully against the railing of the ship. “Clarke,” he said firmly, in his tone that brooked no argument. “I’m going to hug you now.”

And he did.

I can still see that moment now in my head, I can remember every single detail. Clarke’s blonde hair flying in the wind. Kane’s soft low voice saying to her, “Welcome home.”

And I knew that Kane had decided - just as I had - that the Griffins were family.

Abigail leaned forward to rest her head against her daughter’s, her dark hair contrasting with Clarke’s as Kane kissed the top of her head, and then her mouth.  He kissed Abigail for a long time, not caring that the rest of us were watching, and Abigail kissed him back.  Clarke seemed curiously unsurprised by this, but did move away fairly quickly to give them both some breathing room, and walked over into the shadows to stand next to me.

For a long moment, we just looked around us and took it all in. Cage and Dante Wallace’s bodies lay where they'd fallen on the ground. Thelonious Jaha, tied to the steel railing, stared blankly into space, wrapped in dark silence. Molly Monroe was still holding Charlotte. Anya and Lexa were walking around the deck, collecting all the guns in a heap. Octavia and Lincoln sat alone together, wrapped in a tight embrace. Jasper was vomiting over the side of the railing, Maya soothingly stroking his back as Monty and Harper tended to Raven.

“You came through,” she said. “For everyone. For all of us. I always knew you would. I always knew you’d find a way to keep everyone safe.”

I shook my head. “I’d be dead if not for you,” I said. “This wasn’t me. This was us. Together.”

“Together,” she agreed, and she took my hand.

I was about to say more when a series of low dull splashes over the side of the boat startled us both, and we drew our guns as we leaned tentatively over the edge to see a small wooden dinghy pull up alongside the Mount Weather’s lower deck.

“I’m sure you have things under control,” said Indra dryly as Nyko vaulted over the rail and headed up the stairs, “but I did wonder if anyone on board actually had any idea how to turn around the ship.”

I looked at Clarke.

Clarke looked at me.

“I _told_ you you left something out,” I said to her, and she burst out laughing.

The shock of the past days and weeks caught up to us both all at once, I think, and suddenly the fact that we had succeeded in taking out the Wallace Boys only to find ourselves stuck on a ship none of us could drive struck us both as the most hysterically funny thing that had ever happened. We collapsed onto each other in hopeless giggles as Indra shot us both a magnificently withering glare of scorn, tied off the dinghy and stepped onto the deck to follow Nyko inside.  “Amateurs,” she muttered under her breath, and disappeared into the cabin.

On the upper deck, Clarke Griffin leaned back against the metal railing, wiping away tears of laughter.  "When was it going to occur to you that we were drifting out to sea with no one driving this thing?” she asked me.

“Occur to _me_?” I retorted. “ _You’re_ the one that grabbed the crowbar and said, 'Follow me, I have a plan.'"

“I _did_ have a plan. For that crowbar.”

“Well, next time be more specific,” I said. “I assumed you had a _whole_ plan. Not just the crowbar part.”

“ _Next_ time?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Next time one of us gets in trouble and needs rescuing. This is a good life lesson.  I think we've all learned something.  Always remember to make sure the plan takes into account whether or not you’re _stuck on a moving boat_.”

Clarke laughed again, her eyes aglow with delight and warmth, and even though I could see the dark shadows inside her - the shadow of her father, of the men she'd just watched die - she was _alive._  

_Everyone I loved was still alive._

“We’re a hell of a team, Bellamy Blake," she smiled up at me.

“I’ll say.”

She turned away from me then, back to the light-filled corner of the deck where our friends and family were huddled together like refugees, and I followed her eyes to where her mother lay resting in Kane’s arms. Kane had ripped up his dark sweater and bandaged both Abigail’s and Raven’s legs, and I watched him shiver in his white undershirt as he held Abigail close, kissing the top of her head over and over again, and murmuring words into her hair that we didn’t have to be able to hear to understand.

“They’re in love, those two, aren’t they?” she said to me quietly. 

“Yeah,” I said. “They are.”

“He’s not your real dad, Marcus Kane.  Right?  I mean not by blood or anything.”

“No,” I said. “In all the important ways, yeah, but not by blood.”

“Good.”

“Why is that?”

“Because I know my mother,” she said, “and I know that look on her face. Marcus Kane’s going to be stuck with us for the rest of his life.” I laughed. “So if you were his son, then you'd be my stepbrother.  Which would make it a little bit weird,” she said, turning to me and smiling archly, “when you take me out on a date Friday night.”

“I’m taking you out on a date Friday night?” I repeated, a little stupidly.

“You’re the one who kissed me first,” she said. “Don’t act so surprised.”

“Clarke, in about five months you’re going to be one of the richest people in the country,” I said. “I'm nobody.  I'm just a cop.  On probation."

She dismissed it with a hand wave.  "Oh please," she said.  "That probation's not gonna stick."

"You know what I mean, Clarke," I said.  "The cop doesn’t go dancing with the princess. That’s not how it works.”

“Says who?” she said, and she leaned up on her toes to slide one hand up my shoulder and around the back of my neck. “This is New York. Anything can happen.”

And the last conscious thought in my mind, before Clarke Griffin kissed me and I forgot everything else, was:

_What a very good place to end a story._

_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG YOU GUYS REMEMBER THAT ONE TIME CLAIRE THOUGHT SHE COULD WRITE A WHOLE THRILLER WITH LIKE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING PLANNED OUT IN ADVANCE AND IT WAS LITERAL INSANITY AND ALMOST BROKE HER BRAIN? Ah yes, I remember it well.
> 
> Anyway, dear everyone who bore with me through this insanity, waiting with heroic patience while I flailed around over here making everything up as I went along, HI, I LOVE YOU ALL, YOU ARE THE BELOVED NERDS OF MY HEART. "When's the next chapter going up?" "Um literally as soon as I decide what happens next." "Oooh, I wonder where Clarke is." "ME TOO! I ALSO HAVE NO IDEA!" You guys are saints for sticking with me.
> 
> ANYWAYYYY.
> 
> Because, as those of you who have also read "Fields of Athenry" already know, I'm a giant history dork, yes I did spend a ridiculous and borderline pointless amount of time researching things that absolutely no one but me cares about. This is the part where I tell you that yes, I timed out the route of the Mount Weather and it's pretty close to accurate, since this story takes place after they opened the Panama Canal, and all of those cities were major cargo shipping ports in the 1920s. A lot of the research was really fun - things like the history of the Coney Island amusement parks, Prohibition stuff, what fashion designers were big in the 1920s, what would be a really flashy sports car of the time, what was the most posh Park Avenue address, what were the restaurants in the Plaza Hotel at the time, and what were the most popular kinds of guns with mobsters - but I suspect this may be the only piece of fanfic on the internet that both A) contains fairly graphic depictions of oral sex and B) required research into the United States Department of Labor's historical records to check clerical salaries from the 1920s so I could make sure Kane was paying Octavia a living wage. 
> 
> (GUYS, I KNOW, I'M AN INSANE PERSON.) 
> 
> (Also, those of you who read "Fields of Athenry" know that it's not a ChancellorGriffin historical AU if period Catholicism isn't in it SOMEWHERE, so I'm ridorkulously excited that I got to use my most favoritest old-timey New York fact in this story and tell you all about the 2:30 a.m. "Printer's Mass" at the Church of the Holy Cross.)
> 
> Anyway, thank you so much to everyone who came along on this crazy ride with me. If you enjoyed it, now that we actually know it has a real honest-to-God ending, please like/share/comment/spread the word! 
> 
> Thanks again for reading!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [I Concentrate On You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5386694) by [ChancellorGriffin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChancellorGriffin/pseuds/ChancellorGriffin)
  * [Meet Me Under the Mistletoe](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5455436) by [ChancellorGriffin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChancellorGriffin/pseuds/ChancellorGriffin)




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